


Character Bleed

by TheBitterSweetBish



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Amnesia, Dean is Not Okay
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2020-11-16 16:08:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 24
Words: 23,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20864363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBitterSweetBish/pseuds/TheBitterSweetBish
Summary: Dean Winchester is back from Hell, but the world is not as he left it.  Plagued with comflicting memories, he must struggle to unravel the mystery of how he is back and why his past and present seem to be following differing scripts.  Has he finally gone crazy, or is he the last one left sane?





	1. Lazarus, Come Forth

The air was crisp and still in Pontiac on the warm September morning that Dean Winchester dug himself out a shallow, unmarked grave, and into the light of a rising sun. Confused, exhausted, disoriented he staggered to his feet. Blearily he tried to take in his surroundings despite his eyes tearing, and his irises contracted against the harshness of the light after the dark of his...his grave. The realization crept darkly into his mind, like a cold shadowy thing, skulking upon him, and bringing with it a shapeless dread he could quite put a name to.

He stood. He breathed. He blinked. Slowly, too slowly, his eyes and mind began to clear. Memories, or something like them, began to take hold, to solidify into small islands floating freely in the expanse of dark empty space that still made up most of his psyche.

pain

fear...hopelessness

pain, Oh my god, the pain!

Hellhound...a hellhound!

growling, biting, tearing

his flesh, his body tearing...his blood spilling...his voice screaming

He pressed his palms to closed eyes as if the pressure could force the flashes and snippets together, like trying to squeeze scraps of clay into a ball.

barking, snarling, laughter

Lilith's laughter

Lilith laughing as he died...Lilith laughing as he twisted in anguish on the rack...Lilith's god damned gleefull, childish laughter as he...as his...his blade, cut...cut into...into...

"NO!" his brain screamed, so loud he was almost certain he could hear it outside of his head. His eyes flew open and he spun, frantically scanning his surroundings, twisting and darting his eyes to take in all angles.

Everything was still, save for his own ragged breathing and the pounding of his newly beating heart. He wiped the mixture of tears and grime...dirt...dirt from...his grave away from his adjusting eyes.

"Get a grip, Winchester." he rasped. Yes, that was it, Winchester, Dean. He was Dean Winchester. "Get a grip, Dean." he attempted, but his throat, too dry, too raw, like his slowly congealing mind, wouldn't allow it.

OK, OK, OK, he tried to calm himself. A single breath, as deep as he was able, forced its way into his tortured lungs. Ok, now think.

Winchester

Mary

Mom

...Mom carrying him up the stairs...

John

Dad

...strong arms around him...safety...

...fear...urgency...something shoved into his arms..."Go! Now! Don't look back!"

He hadn't, not ever, not once since that night.

...a weight in his arms...

...a shadow over a bed...

...tears on a Christmas Eve...

...a shy voice, asking about girls...

...a surprised voice, saying his name...

...a fire...a shattered mirror...a dark orchard...

...an orchard...something lost... something important

But he'd found it, in an orchard...a barn...a crumbling house...a motel room...

Over and over, finding something lost, something important, something precious...

...a dirt road...on his knees...a weight in his arms...blood, blood on his hands...

"It's not even that bad."

"You're gonna be good as new."

"I'm gonna take care of you."

"...my pain in the ass little brother."

"No! No, no, no, no, no, oh god no!"

"SAM!!!"

A sharp, pointed focus stabbed through the swirling wisps of thoughts that were performing their twisting, drifting dance in his mind, brushing them aside and sending them careening off into a whole new chaos. The point, the one thought crystalized at the center, obscuring everything else with its own burning brilliance.

Sam, he had to find Sam.


	2. Starting Over

He didn't know how long he had been walking. He'd been more in his own head than the physical world around him, passing the time letting the scraps and shards of returning memories drift in the void, occasionally colliding with one another and merging into larger chunks.

He was Dean Winchester, that much he knew. His parents were dead, killed by...by something evil, something with soulless eyes and a nasty smile. He hunted things, evil things, him and his family, him, Sam, and Dad. No, not Dad. Dad was dead. Killed by the same yellow eyed son of a bitch that had killed Mom. Killed because Dad had made a deal...a deal to...

His mind veered away from that line of thought so sharply that it snapped him out of his meandering recollections and back into reality, and he took quick stock of his current surroundings. As he crossed the dusty parking lot to the lone small building he hoped that he hadn't passed any earlier opportunity while his mind and body had been on separate vacations. Wouldn't that just be like Dean Winchester? Come back from the dead only to drop dead again from starvation and dehydration a few hours later.

His thoughts, his identity, and story were coming together in his head, but thank god, or you know, whatever stood in for god, for the survival instinct that lead him naturally to water, food, less, um, strictly essential basic necessities on autopilot, as his higher mind continued the attempt to weave the loose ends and tangled threads in his head into some kind of recognizable pattern.

Fed and hydrated, inside out of the increasing heat of the risen sun baring down on him, he felt better, not just less likely to keel over from exhaustion, but more focused. He sat wearily on a stack of soda cases and took stock. He knew the date now, thanks to the newspaper he'd found, September 18, 2010. He knew his name. He knew he was back from the dead and was reasonably certain that this was not a normal thing to have happened, not even for, he groped around his mind, hunters. Yes, that was the word, hunters. He was Dean Winchester, and he was a hunter. The realization washed over him and filled him, and it felt a whole lot like the same satisfying relief that had come from draining that first sweet, cold bottle of water.

He was a hunter. He wasn't entirely sure he fully understood what that meant. He had a vague idea, flashes, feelings, but the full meaning of the core concept slipped from his grasp whenever he tried to get a solid hold on it, like trying to hold on to a wet bar of soap. He couldn't quite keep it from escaping whenever he nearly had it. He knew one thing for certain, it was a good thing, a thing to take pride in. Dad would be proud, had been proud, and that, that somehow filled him just like the water had as well. His mouth twitched, just for a second, into what might have been the start of a smile.

He liked thinking about Dad, John. John Winchester, badass hunter, hero. John had fought the good fight. John had saved people. John had taught him to drive, to shoot, to fight, and too much else to even begin to think about. John had...had written things down.

The realization hit him with such shock that he had jumped up, patting frantically around himself, looking for the journal. His disappointment in not finding it was less than his disappointment in himself for thinking that he would. Of course, he wouldn't have been buried with it. Sam would need it.

_Why had he been buried?_

_Hunter's were burned._

_**Dad **had been burned._

With a pained groan, he buried his face in his hands. After all morning scratching for fragments, begging his brain like a dog for precious scraps, the dam was beginning to spring leaks. Too much was coming too fast, too fast to process, to put in any coherent order, to understand. He made a pained, desperate sound, driving the heels of his hands into his temples, as if that could force the flow to slow down, force the thoughts to come one at a time, or at least settle into their proper place rather than crashing into each other, setting off crashing cascades in his brain.

"Damnit!" he exploded, smashing his fist into the wall. The rush of pain from his abraded knuckles helped ground him, allowed him to, if not get the montage of flashing images and whispering voice to be less noisy, at least to make his logical, thinking part, the part he could control, loud enough to be heard over them.

"OK Winchester, Dean, what now? What comes next? What would Dad say?" He thought about that. Somehow, mentally consulting the ghost in his mind of the still largely unknown entity of John Winchester calmed him. He grasped onto that calm, wrapped it around himself and relaxed into it as he had into strong arms that kept him safe so many years before, the night of the fire, the night that Mom had...

Again his mind took a sharp right turn away from the line of thought. He turned bloodshot eyes towards the ceiling, not seeing it. They brimmed with tears, enough to blur his vision, but not to actually spill. He heard his cracked, broken voice not quite sob, "What do I do, Dad? I don't know what to do. I'm all alone and I don't know anything. I barely know my name."

_Winchester, you're Dean Winchester._

"Dad," a single tear escaped one eye and made its way down his cheek. "What am I supposed to do?" he implored. The silence didn't answer. In that silence Dean Winchester, badass hunter, scared little boy broke, crumpled like a house of cards and sobbed, letting all the confusion and frustration run its course, wash over him and drain out of him along with the tears.


	3. Here And Now

He felt better, as most people do, after the cry. The overwhelming emotions had shut out the fragmented memories that had been battering against his being all day like...

_bugs blanketing a house._

He shook his head with a quizzical expression, wondering just where that weird ass-analogy had come from.

"I'd think you're losing it, Winchester," he muttered, "but I don't know for a fact that we ever had it."

His spell hadn't helped his exhaustion, which was worse, heavier, but the purge had done him good emotionally, and mentally. He was more settled now, focused enough to push the storm of returning memories onto the back burner to simmer quietly while his thinking mind focused on the immediate concerns of his current situation. He was, he realized, pushing his luck on how long he could safely stay in a building that he had broken into and burglarized. Some part of him knew he should feel guilt about that and wondered why he just didn't.

He pushed the thought away, dumped it in the back burner pot with all the other background noise where it couldn't distract him from the needs of his here and now. Now, he needed not to be here. Here was bad. He needed to put here behind him before whoever owned here showed back up and now developed into an even bigger mess.

Blessedly, unlike the scattered puzzle pieces that somehow (hopefully) fit together to form his past and identity, his skill sets seemed to be intact. Just like the primal drive of survival that had driven his body to food and water while his mind had been otherwise occupied trying to cobble itself together out of shattered fragments, muscle memory...

_That's what Sammy would have called it._

...had hotwired the car as naturally as breathing, or walking.

Pulling out of the lot, leaving a dust plume in his wake, Dean felt good, really good, the best he'd felt since the sweet relief of fresh air bursting into his tortured lungs at the end of a hellish journey through dirt and darkness that morning.

Driving the car came as naturally as starting it had, and it felt comfortably right. A destination wasn't important, not yet. His first concern was to put as much distance as he could between himself and the crime scene he had created, so he just chose a direction and went. At some point, he knew, he would have to figure out where he was, and where he needed to go, but for now, he just let himself sink comfortably into the way the rumble of the engine and the feeling of the wheel under his hands somehow made him feel more like himself than anything else had so far.

Soon he was humming contentedly, his thumbs drumming in time on the wheel. With no effort, he just slipped into being Dean, and he embraced it, luxuriating in how good it felt to just be, without having to try and make it happen. He still wasn't clear on who Dean was, but he knew how Dean felt and this was it.

Absently, his hand drifted over the center dash, intent on nudging a tape into the player. Not finding it jerked him out of his fragile, new found sense of self. He frowned, not in distress, but confusion. Something was still off. Driving still felt good, hell so good, but something, something important, was off.

He was better though, not like that first hour when it had been like stumbling through a choreographed dance, blundering into bits of the world that moved according to a plan he didn't know and couldn't see. Now it was more like he was in step, but off beat, a step behind.

He focused on the drive, grounded himself with the familier sounds and feelings while he worked the situation over in his mind. He couldn't just keep on like this, living off pilfered road food. Sleeping...where? In a stolen vehicle by the side of the road in...damn, he still didn't even know where he was.

He continued on, a few more miles until a sign announced the approach of a roadside motel. The sight of it sparked the same feeling in him that first pulling out onto the road had. It was right. It was comfortable. It was in step and on beat. "OK," he agreed with himself and pressed down harder on the gas pedal, loving how god damned good it felt to at least know his next move.


	4. Just Seven Numbers

Dean had grown up in motel rooms, all different, and yet, all exactly the same in all the ways that mattered. Entering this one and flicking on the lights he let the feeling of coming home wash over him the same way the light suddenly bathed the room. He stepped in, moving on reflex to toss his bag on the bed, coming up short because, just like the tape deck that had not been there, he had no bag to toss.

For the first time, he considered that the only clothes he had in his possession were soiled with ground in dirt and soaked in sweat. He was going to have to address that.

If he couldn't change, at least he could shower. Even with the crap water pressure and lukewarm water the Sweet Dreams Traveler's Rest had to offer, Dean felt like it was damn near the best thing he ever felt. He stayed in until the water became too cool for continued enjoyment.

He had nothing clean to change into, and couldn't bring himself to drag the filthy clothes back over his freshly cleaned skin. He'd have to dress again eventually, but there was no immediate need to go out. He could just stay wrapped in the towel, for now. The T-shirt and boxers, he reasoned, could be washed out in the sink. He'd just have to shake as much of the grime as he could out of the jeans. It would have to do until he could expand his wardrobe.

For now, he decided, the first thing he needed was some more substantial food than the candy bars and snack cakes he'd liberated from the in-and-out he'd busted into. Not able to go out, he consulted the local listing that was usually a staple in most motel rooms for a take out place to bring food to him.

Pizza ordered, he allowed himslef to relax, reclining on the bed, eyes closed, head cradled in his hands. He finally had a calm moment in which to consider the tangled mess he had been pushing to the back of his mind all day. Cautiously he cracked the door, taking care that it didn't all tumble out on him at once. Treading lightly, he picked his way through, as if traversing a minefield, trying to home in on the things that had the biggest impacts. Those incites, he reasoned, must be the most important.

Sam was right there at the forefront, and of course, Dean remembered Sam. From that first moment in the field, when the bright memory of his little brother had come bursting through all the pain, and terror, and crap that seemed to be Dean's only current memories of himself, it had all flooded back, all in one piece. It was the one thing that stayed, and stayed strong, not flickering and shifting like everything else did. Right now, Dean remembered Sam better than he remembered himself.

He made that his anchor, clutched onto his memory of Sam, clung to it like a life preserver. He let it keep him buoyed up amidst the debris that drifted about him like the remnants of a shattered vessel, only this vessel had been his life. Those pieces of flotsam were him, and he had to find a way to piece himself back together.

If it had just been for himself, he might not have bothered. He hadn't seen a lot so far of Dean Winchester that seemed much worth worrying about. He might have just said, "screw it" and found himself a new life to live, but there was that one, strong, steady pull towards the thing that made him who he really was, what he knew in his gut, in a place beyond mind, and memory, and reasoning that he had always been. He had one primary function, look after Sammy.

He let himself meander contentedly through the memories in search of something he could use. There were pleasant ones, shared moments ranging from the moody kid Sammy had been to the moody adult Sam had become. There were far more unpleasant ones, hurts, fears, losses, but even these were a comfort, simply in that they existed. Sam, right now, was the only really real thing in Dean's world, and in a way, it felt like maybe that was nothing new. Maybe to Dean, Sam was all that had ever been truly real.

He sifted through it all, like paging through a photo album, or unpacking dust coated boxes after years in the attic, taking time to examine each item, relishing in the details, savoring the feelings. But as comforting and enjoyable as it was to revel in, skinned knees and carved initials weren't getting him any closer to anything that would tell him where Sam was now.

Gradually, achingly slowly, just out of reach, something, something that felt important began to surface. Dean grabbed at it, only have it skitter away, as if he'd frightened it by moving too quickly. He scrambled after it as it retreated, and then forced himself to calm. He tried to just let himself drift naturally towards the important thing. Eventually, it peeked out from its hiding place. Dean dared not even let himself breathe as he watched it emerge. It was a number. It was a long number. It was, OH MY GOD, it was a phone number!

Bolting up, he fumbled to grab at the message pad that was thankfully on the night table. Chanting the number over and over under his breathe he scribbled it down before it could slip through one of the cracks in his shattered mind and disappear again.

He held up the resulting masterpiece, beaming at it as if it was the most wonderful thing ever. He could call Sam. He would find Sam. He and Sam would be together, soon, and then everything else would fall into place.


	5. The Man In The Mirror

The pizza dude turned out to be a chick, and not a badly shaped one, who, while initially flustered, didn't seem all that displeased with the door having been answered by Dean Winchester, wearing nothing but a towel. Dean couldn't find it in himself to flirt back. He didn't even bother to watch her wiggle back to her car. He just turned his back, closed the door, and tossed the pizza box onto the table before he succumbed to the urge to throw it across the room. He didn't even want the damned thing anymore.

He dropped heavily onto the edge of the bed, his face buried in his hands. Briefly, he considered trying the number one more time but quickly decided that all he would be doing was torturing himself.

The first time he'd gotten the recorded message he had assumed that, in his enthusiastic rush, he must have misdialed. The second time he'd forced himself to go more slowly, take more care. By the third time, he was meticulously triple checking every number before pressing its corresponding button, like it was Sesame Street, or Phone Calls For Dummies, or some shit.

Each time, he got the same result, "no such number", not, "currently unavailable", or "no longer in service", no such freakin' number. The lifeline that he'd worked so hard to pull out of the cluttered pile that was currently his brain didn't exist.

He'd briefly grasped onto the hope that the problem had been on his end, but dismissed it. The pizza order had gone through with no trouble, as evidenced by the bang on the door that had interrupted his thoughts and announced the arrival of said pizza, which was now cooling, forgotten on the table.

He pulled his face up out of his hands, but his head still hung. The number wasn't real, and if the number wasn't real how could he know any of it was? The only evidence he had of anything was his own memories, or whatever they were, and yeah, like that was reliable information. He had even less to go on than he did before.

When he wandered aimlessly into the bathroom, it had been more just a way to move around, to do something besides sit and think increasingly dark thoughts, than for any actual purpose. "Are you even real?", he queried his reflection. Hell, it's not like the other him in the mirror taking on independent life and imparting the secret knowledge that would be the key to sorting this mess out would even be the weirdest thing to have happened that day. So he looked deeply into his own tired, pained eyes, silently imploring them to give him, if not answers, at least a clue.

And then he saw it, just below his collar bone, the black, sun ringed pentagram, the twin to the one Sam wore. He watched as his reflection ran its fingers over it, tracing the familer lines. It was here. I was real. He remembered the buzz of the needle, the sting, the blood, Sam in the next chair, throwing him the bitch face because he had told him to, "pretend he was a man, and take it like one". Maybe all that was the product of some messed up head injury, or coma dream, or who knows what, but this, right here, right now, was real. It was there, which meant as some point he had gotten it, which meant that the memories were just as easily real as false.

It was one bad phone number, he soothed himself, no reason to panic, no reason to give up. In fact, there was every reason in the world not to, because Sam **was** out there somewhere. Dean **was** going to find him, and God himself had better not try to stand in his way.

Feeling renewed drive Dean smirked at his reflection. "Thanks, dude." he quipped before striding from the room, homing in on the abandoned pizza, suddenly very hungry. He did not look back, half afraid the face in the mirror would answer.


	6. Dreams Of My Father

The events of the day had been wearing, so even though the sky was barely beginning to darken Dean already felt the need for sleep pressing down on him. He was contentedly full on the better part of a large meat medley. What clothes he could wash were hanging over the shower curtain rod to dry overnight. He lay on the bed, staring at nothing in particular, nursing one of his ill-gained bottles of water, and wishing that he'd had the foresight to have grabbed a few beers as well.

Fed, relatively safe, as prepared as he could be for whatever came tomorrow, he let himself relax into a tired calm. It relieved him, just like that first drink of water, the sporadic memories of John, the familar ease of being behind the wheel. After a day of frantically chasing his tail from one crises to the next, it was awesome to just lay and sink into semi-wakefulness, knowing that nothing was currently coming at him so fast that he couldn't allow himself the rest he so desperately needed, as surely as he had needed the food and shower. His here and now was, at least for the moment, settled.

Of course, he was going to have to ditch the stolen car. There was no real hurry in replacing it. At the moment, there was no need to go anywhere. He had no destination in mind that would be any improvement over his current location, which he now knew to be just outside of Pontiac, Illinois. He had rolled that around in his head for a bit, hoping it would connect with something, but nada. It was just a place, like so many other places that he had spent his life passing through. He couldn't come up with any good reason why he was here, other than apparently it was where he had been buried.

That was something though. Why had he been buried? He was pretty sure he should have been burned.

_Flames licked up at the darkness. He and Sam stood side by side, each lost in their own thoughts. Each stoically repressing their own emotions, taking their own individual paths to coping with their shared loss._

_"Did he say anything? You know, before he..." Sam asked._

_"No, nothing." Dean lied. He hated lying to Sam, but he couldn't share the truth when he wasn't even ready to face it himself yet._

He should have been burned. Hunters were burned. Dad had been burned.

Lazily Dean just let his mind wander on its own. He was getting too tired to try to continue forcing in it in any particular direction, and fat lot of good that had done him up to now anyway.

Dad had been burned, but before that, Dad had been bad ass. Dad was a superhero, the coolest dad in the world. He killed the bad guys, and nothing could kill him, until something did. Dean choked back a small pained noise at that thought. It had been, he shuffled through slowly organizing memories, two years, somewhere around two years that Dad had been gone. The wound had never really healed.

_Over and over the tire iron crashed into the trunk hatch, digging deep gouges into the metal. The noise assaulted his ears, drowning out his own angry, pained cries. He kept up the barrage until exhaustion forced him to stop and the iron fell from his limp hand, hitting the ground with an anti-climactic clang. The pain, the anger wasn't the least bit smaller for his explosion._

The wound had never really healed, but this was like losing Dad all over again, old wounds ripped open and made fresh. Dean's eyes burned a little, maybe teared up, just a bit, but he was just too tired, too emotionally wrung out at this point to manage much more than that.

Sleep and waking, memory and reality were getting all tangled up in his head. Drifting somewhere between all these worlds he could almost see John now, seated at the table, filling the lines of the old leather journal.

_"You have to take notes, son, keep records. Don't trust the important information to your memory. It's just like keeping a gun clean, or an engine tuned. You take care of your equipment, and it will take care of you, and information, lore, tracking intel, patterns in events, those are some of the most important equipment a hunter can have. We all have our own preferred weapons, and methods, but information, that's universal. You can't improvise it, or jury-rig it, or half ass it."_

Dad had written things down.

"Yeah, all right, Dad. I hear you." Dean mumbled, barely this side of sleep. With sloppy movements, he retrieved the note pad from to bedside table. He ripped off the top page and tossed the useless phone number to the side. After a long time staring at the fresh page, considering what he knew so far, what he could be sure of, he finally wrote:

**My name is Dean Winchester.**

He looked at it, read it over and over until it began to lose its meaning. The rest of the page taunted him, looking so blank, so big, even though it was ridiculously small for the job at hand. Eventually, he added:

**I am a hunter.**


	7. Branded

When Dean jolted awake the next morning for a panicked instant he thought he was underground. Frantic hands groped out into the dark but met only empty air. His eyes began to adjust to the dim light, and he realized that he had woken before sunrise. Not surprising, it couldn't have been much past six when the weight of yesterday's events had drug him down into a deep dreamless sleep.

He was grateful for that. He was having enough trouble sorting his head out without having to wonder about the importance or potential meaning of anything his brain had churned out while he had been asleep. Just as well it had decided to take the night off. He had his hands full enough with what it did while he was awake.

His sleep may have been restful, but apparently had not been untroubled. He must have done a fair amount of tossing and turning based on the fact that the towel that had served as his only available garment the evening before didn't seem to be anywhere he could locate at a glance.

He was relieved to have woken before it was light. He'd managed to drift off with the curtains wide open and had neglected to put out the "do not disturb" sign. His early wake up had probably prevented a maid, or passerby from getting an eye full. Not that Dean was particularly shy about his body, but he generally preferred to be awake and consenting for any full frontal.

His body was achy, and he considered the merits of rising versus rolling over, dragging the covers over himself and trying for a few more hours of downtime. His bladder cast the deciding vote. With a groan, he hoisted himself off the bed.

His body protested with stabs of pain as he stumbled in the near dark towards the bathroom. He hit the switch and immediately regretted it when the burst of light assaulted his dark adjusted eyes, causing him to wince.

Movement started to work some of the ache out of his sleep stiffened joints. He took care of what he'd come to do and turned to retrieve his clothes, hoping they would be at least dry enough to wear.

Man what had he done to his shoulder, he wondered. Had he slept on it wrong? Fallen asleep lying on something? Damn thing was hurting like a sonuvabitch. He rolled it hard, trying to alleviate the pain as he snatched his thankfully dry T and boxers from where they hung.

It was as he was shrugging into his shirt that he glimpsed it out of the corner of his eye, the discolored patch on his left shoulder. He went to the mirror to check the area. "What the fu..." he muttered, not believing what he was looking at. A handprint, a large handprint marked his skin. Was that a burn? Gingerly he touched the area, wincing with a hiss when he found it tender to the touch. No way that was there yesterday. No way he wouldn't have noticed. What the hell?

Lots of questions and no answers he barreled back into the main room and threw on the lights. He scanned the room quickly for anything that looked off, out of place. He half expected to see some flame handed, supernatural, who knows what lurking in a corner, but no, nothing seemed strange. Nothing looked moved from where it had been last night, with the exception of the notepad on the floor by the bed, which looked like it had fallen there.

He sat on the bed and picked it up to examine it. His own handwriting covered the page. My name is Dean Winchester, he read, I am a hunter.

A blurry image, a fresh memory, formed in his mind. He was fairly certain he had written this.

I died May 2nd earlier this year. Happy freaking birthday, Sammy. I'm sorry. God help me, I'm so freaking sorry, the text continued.

Yes, he was sure now. He remembered now. Worn beyond coherency he had written because...because Dad had told him to. He jerked his head up towards the table, but nothing was there. No John, no journal, nothing but a mostly empty pizza box sitting in a patch of dim light from a barely risen sun. Dad was dead he reminded himself.

He returned his attention to the pad in his hands, flipped through it and found almost every page filled. Some of it wasn't easily made out, and some just made no kind of sense, but as he scanned the pages the occasional phrase jumped out at him.

**faith healers, what a load of crap**

**We found Sam in Cold Oak, too late.**

**lost the colt - Burn in hell, bitch!**

He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to focus. Had he written all this in his sleep? Just so close to sleep he didn't remember? Didn't really matter he decided. He had done it, and now he had at least a sketchy tangible record which, no matter how badly written, had to be better than his glitching memory.

He retrieved the pen from where it had fallen to the floor and found the last marked page. His eyes flicked over the last entry.

**My last thought was, I was leaving Sam alone with that hell bitch. I failed him again.**

Dean's blood ran cold. Lilith, they had been in the room with Lilith. The hellhound killed him, and Sam had been left alone with Lilith. Oh god, no! He couldn't be...

_"no such number"_

"NO!" he yelled, bolting to his feet, rage coursing through his frame like a roll of thunder. "I will kill her! I will slaughter everyone she ever knew! I will..."

He collapsed back on the bed in a crumpled heap. "Oh god, Sammy, no." he sobbed, the rage giving way to pain and fear. A hard shudder shook his body and he just surrendered to it. For a long time, he just sat, listening to the choked sounds of his own whispered pleas, letting the emotions run their course.

"OK Dean, knock it off." he eventually berated himself. You don't know anything for sure. Eighteen hours ago you didn't even know your own name for sure. You can't do anything for Sam if you keep breaking down like a little bitch every five minutes, so man up and get your crap together!" With one last deep breath, he shook off the errant emotion and resolved to carry on, move forward.

He picked up the pad and pen from where he had dropped them. Below the last entry he wrote:

**attacked by something last night, hand shaped burn - left shoulder**


	8. Shark In The Pool

This bar was good, it was freakin' awesome. The second he'd stepped through the door and inhaled the mix of stale smoke and fresh beer, heard the clack of pool balls, backdropped by "Smoke On The Water" blaring from a prehistoric jukebox, he felt right. He felt once again like he had hitting the road in his jacked ride, like he was really and truly himself. This was his place and these were his people. It didn't matter that he had never seen the place before, or that after today he may never see it again. Right now, in this moment, he was home. Better, he was him. This was a dance he knew, unlike the off tempo world outside.

Before leaving the Sweet Dreams that morning to travel into Pontiac, he had counted what remained of the cash he had acquired. The paltry sixty-three eighty-seven was not going to get him far. He figured, if he had to, that he could keep going from one "borrowed" car to the next for travel, and if need be sleep, but he also needed to re-equip, clothes, and just as important, weapons. As it was, he was walking around just as naked as he had woken that morning, and he didn't like it.

No respectable bar was open at the hour he had rolled into town, so his first stop had been to pick up a notebook. His second had been an eat in donut shop, where he had worked to transcribe his notes from the night before into something more organized and legible while he packed away a number of jelly donuts that he lost count of after three and enough coffee to keep him wired until the day after tomorrow. They'd kicked him out an hour after he'd stopped ordering anything more than refills.

He'd found himself a likely bar, The Loose Moose (lame ass name that he, for some unknown reason, kinda liked), and camped in the parking lot. In the back seat, where he had more room to stretch out comfortably, he continued to work on his notes while he waited for the Moose to open.

The work was tedious but inciteful. Reading through, rewriting, elaborating, he could almost feel things coming together in his head, staying together, finally beginning to form into a cohesive whole that while spotty, and full of blank spots, was at least solid and didn't feel like it would dissolve like sugar in the rain the second he stopped making a focused effort to keep it all together. Damned if Dad, or his ghost, or his memory, or whatever it had been, hadn't been right, and Dean enjoyed the way that felt. Sure, it had probably just been a waking dream, or stress induced hallucination, but whatever it was, it was Dad. Alone in a world without Sam, without even a clear idea of who else there might be that also wasn't around, without even all of himself, Dean would take it, crazy fever dream or not.

He hadn't wanted to walk in right at opening. He was here to score some operating capital, and there was no way to do that in an empty bar, well no legal way, so he'd given it another hour for a bit of a crowd to show. By then he was more than happy to toss the homework aside for the day and go check out his place of business for the evening. With any luck, he mused, he could finish out the night getting paid and laid both.

A quick scope of the room as he entered let him identify the best strategic spot at the bar. Not that he expected a pack of werewolves to lay siege, but this was the sort of place where an accidental collision or compliment to the wrong lady could escalate into a brawl faster than a '67 Chevy could go from zero the sixty. He didn't know the regular clientele, so better to hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

The bottle blonde bartender, who's personality turned out to be a sweet as her top shelf ass, filled his "whatever's on tap" order and slid a basket of pretzels within his reach with an expression that implied more than that was within Dean's reach, if he was interested. It was his first beer since being back. He was tempted to chug it, but he knew he had to keep his sobriety relatively intact to achieve his objective.

He made a quick list in his head, clothes, food, gas, rent, phone, at least one gun, with ammo. He needed to walk out of here tonight with at least three hundred, bare minimum. He nursed the beer as he assessed the crowd, looking for the most likely target.


	9. Moonlight And Memories

It was still pretty far off from closing time when Dean emerged back into the Moose's now dark parking lot. Things had gone well, a little too well. The wad of cash, now thick in his pocket, surpassed not just his expectations, but his hopes. On the downside, increasing grumblings had sent a pretty clear message that while the regulars didn't much mind shuffling the cash around amongst themselves in a never ending series of games and bets, none of them was too happy with unknown drifters who came in and crashed the local economy by emptying the kitty and leaving with the proceeds.

Gambling debts may be debts of honor, but even so, tempers had been running a little too high for Dean's taste, and he had decided that he'd rather walk out while he still only lightly buzzed than to risk being really drunk by the time his marks worked themselves up into the "jump him in the parking lot" stage.

He felt too good right now to have to give anybody a beat down, and besides, something had come up. Still, he was reluctant to leave, especially before he could accomplish phase two of his two part plan. He'd really enjoyed the evening, not just the drinking, the flirting, winning bets, the usual enjoyments that had made his life bearable since his first fake ID, but the reveling in the wonderful feeling of just how right it all was, how much himself he was in the familiar environment.

He knew once he walked out, back into the real world, he would likely revert to the out of sync, not quite right version that he had been struggling to hold together with will power and wishful thinking between all too frequent emotional break downs. He hoped the buzz would help, because his new rule was, one chick flick meltdown a day. After that, zero tolerance for any further crippling waterworks, and he had already blown today's allotment first thing this morning. No matter what, he was going to make it through the night with out channeling the spirit of Marsha Brady, and that was just the way it was.

"Seriously, Dean? Marsha Brady?" flitted through his mind, and he had actually glanced to the side and said, "Shut up, Sam." before he remembered. He squeezed his eyes shut against the burn while a tightening feeling took hold of his chest. "No," he growled, low and guttural, "ain't gonna happen," not in a parking lot of a dive bar full of drunk sore losers that were probably arguing over who was going to hold and who was going to hit right now. "You are Dean Freakin' Winchester, so man up and act like it!" he ordered.

He felt something trickle down his right hand and opened his eyes to investigate, discovering that he had dug his nails into his palm hard enough to draw blood. That's OK, that's fine, better blood than tears.

Rattled and buzzed seemed like a bad combination behind the wheel, so as much as he craved a drive for the sense of self it would likely provide, he instead set out on foot, hoping to find a room for the night within walking distance. He'd decide in the morning whether to come back for the car or to just opt for alternative transportation.

**XXXXX**

Another night, another crappy motel room, but this one was admittedly better than the last. The Moonlight was classy enough for the desk clerk to have looked oddly at a guy checking in with only a plastic shopping bag and no vehicle. The attitude had disappeared with the promise of a cash payment.

Settling in Dean remembered that all he had eaten all day was an undetermined amount of jelly donuts and bar pretzels. He considered calling the same pizza delivery as last night in hopes of getting lucky enough to bring the same pretty delivery girl back into his life, but no, he had a higher priority to address. He opted for Chinese, mainly because it was the first thing to catch his eye, and he really didn't want to waste too much time on it. He just needed something to put in his stomach, before the booze got lonely and started kicking up a fuss.

After the call, and a three second period of mourning for his hopes of some soft, bumpy companionship for the night, he turned his attention to his new lead. This evening hadn't been all about fun and profit. He was learning that certain situations solidified him, brought him into himself. He didn't know if it was the extended time he had spent in that state, or if time was just healing whatever it was that was wrong with him, but in that bar, drinking and hustling, just being Dean, things had begun to shake loose. Mostly it was just a name here, a face there, but there had been one big one.

He'd already known the name, came across it a bunch of times while trying to make whatever sense he could of his exhaustion induced auto-biography, but he couldn't connect it to anything. Sure, a flash of a face, some short phrases had teased his memory, but nothing more really than replays of what he'd already written down, things that he clearly already knew, on some level, even if he couldn't draw them out at will yet, but nothing he could use, nothing that helped. Nothing that is until, while lining up a shot, something had skittered across his brain and he'd had to stand up and blink a few times to sort out his actual surroundings from the vivid image forcing its way into his awareness.

Now, in the quiet calm of his room for the night, he drew a deep bracing breath. "OK Dean," he told himself firmly, "Somewhere in that scrambled brain you've got a phone number for Bobby Singer, and so help me, before this night is over, you're going to cough it up. Let's get started."


	10. All Nighter

It had been easier this time. He knew what to expect, and the landscape had become far less chaotic after the hours working the puzzle in a tangible, hands on format. Trouble was, it had been too successful. Dean had been pleased that not even ten minutes in he had ferreted out a number. He was less pleased that it hadn't stopped there. By the time the food arrived he had two complete numbers, and three fragments that may have been pieces of different numbers or, for all he knew, fit together in some unknown order.

He took a much needed meal break while his mind absorbed the fact that "Bobby Singer" and "one phone number" were not compatible concepts.

Once he'd opened the door, the information had come easily. It flowed in and took easy root, not with the nasty shock of remembering something as if he were learning it for the first time, aware that he had not known it, or at least been aware of it the moment before. Memories of Bobby slipped easily in and made themselves at home as if they had been there all along.

Again, Dean didn't know the cause of that, if there was something different about these particular memories, or if he was just getting better, shaking off whatever number death and resurrection had done on his head. Whichever it was, it was a mixed blessing. It was awesome to have such a substantial chunk of himself back so quickly, so seamlessly, but damn if it wasn't such an awful lot to wade through in the quest for small details.

Dean picked at the tail end of a carton of sweet and sour as he considered the new information and reflected that he had never fully appreciated having a brother who was a research junkie. Sam had been not just willing, but eager to wade through the boring stuff and find the shortest path to something Dean could just shoot, or stab, kill until it didn't need killing anymore.

But Sam wasn't here, and even if he had been, he couldn't help because this research was all in Dean's head, all his to deal with. He sighed pushing back from the table. No sense putting it off. This was the only lead he had and he was going to follow it because he didn't know any other way to get Sam back, and he was going to get Sam back. He'd do anything to get Sam back, even... research. So yeah, he was going to sit there all night, examining everything he knew about Bobby Singer, looking for clues that would lead to numbers for, what was it, six or seven phones in the hub, who knew how many cells, probably in the dozens just in burners alone, and knowing Bobby, quite possibly a crystal ball or magic mirror buried somewhere in his self assembled library of the weird.

**XXXXX**

Dean groaned. He had a headache. His hand was cramping, and the fresh wounds from his nails kept breaking open from movement. His ass had passed sore heading for numb an hour ago. His pleasant buzz and good mood were long gone. Outside, the sky was just beginning to pink with the sunrise. He'd blown through the last of the room's complimentary coffee somewhere around three. Adrenaline had carried him another couple of hours. Now he was going on sheer stubbornness and dogged determination.

He looked at the product of the night's labors through blurred, bloodshot eyes, a long list of number sequences, some only two or three digets in length, others frustratingly coming in one number shy of usefulness. On the next page. Dean had jotted a handful of completed numbers that he had managed to cobble together through a combination of hazy memories, logical deduction, and flat out guesswork that he liked to think was gut instinct. There were three others that were questionable, but worth a shot anyway. The first five however, these he was reasonably sure were correct.

He hadn't anticipated the project stretching into the wee hours of the morning, but the work, while nerve wracking, had proven somewhat addictive. Somewhere around the time the coffee had run out he had begun promising to go to bed in ten more minutes, or after trying just one more thing. After an hour or so of that, he had simply said "screw it" and resolved to stay at it until exhaustion forced him to stop. As he squeezed his eyes shut in an effort to force the blur from his vision he had to admit that it seemed like that point had arrived.

He couldn't help it. For two days he had felt like he was spinning his wheels, drifting in and out of himself, dealing with regular person crap like finances and laundry. Practically none of that time had been spent on anything that was going to get him any closer to finding Sam. This, while not what Dean would call a solid lead, was at least promising enough for him to grab onto it with both hands. It was a lifeline that was going to keep him from charging off in some random direction in a motivated, but pointless effort that would do nothing but burn off some of the energy. Once he had started, he had been unable to stop himself, despite having hated every single second of it.

Now he had eight possible contact numbers, and likely one of the first five would work. He was tempted to start making calls right then, but he was too worn, too blurred to trust that he could dial correctly. Even if he could, there'd be no guarantees of the ring waking Bobby, who was likely still asleep at this hour, like any halfway sane person would be. He'd just end up having to make every call again to double check.

He was right back to the nothing-you-can-do-right-now point, but instead of it eating a hole in his gut, he was actually grateful that he could give himself permission to grab a couple of hours rack time. He staggered across the floor, swaying heavily, not sure whether to laugh or grumble at the fact that he hadn't even been able to indulge in the good time that usually put him in this condition, and fell face first onto the bed. His head was nowhere near the pillow. One leg hung gracelessly over the side. He was asleep before the mattress had settled from the impact.


	11. Dude, Where's My Car?

He hadn't been too disappointed when the first call didn't go through. Three hours of sleep had only done so much to repair the damage he had done to himself the night before. He was still largely unfocused. Honestly, he wasn't sure he had the energy for emotion right now.

He repeated the procedure he had used with Sam's number, dialing carefully, and then again with a ludicrous level of excessive attention, twice, before exploding. "Son of a bitch!" he flung the notebook across the room. He had been so sure!

Angrily he paced for a bit, burning off the frustration until he felt ready to retrieve the book. He glared at the page, as if demanding the number explain itself. That was Bobby's landline number. He wouldn't have known it yesterday, but now, that piece of himself back in place, as complete and solid as the memory of Sam had been from the get go, he knew that he knew. He had dialed it enough times. The others were a little iffy, numbers that he had selected off of cell menus, or that appeared on cards that he flashed to make problems go away. He'd never really paid that much attention to them, but this one he knew.

He jerked the receiver off the cradle and stabbed the number from memory, a memory he'd had, a brief recent vacation aside, since he'd been twelve freakin' years old, as if he could force the call through with brute force. He slammed the phone back down at the first sound of the annoying high pitched tone, not bothering to wait for the message.

Frustrated, he let his gaze travel across the other numbers, wondering if there was any point in trying them. Yes, he decided. He'd just lost a night's sleep harvesting the damned things. He didn't have a lot of hope that any of them was worth the page he'd wasted on them, and definitely not the sleep he'd lost, but he might as well know for sure.

Even though he hadn't hoped for much success the tight icy grip on his gut got a little stronger with each failed attempt. He worked his way through the list, trying each multiple times and finally only admitted defeat after going back to the main landline number for another three attempts that he couldn't stop himself from making, even though the outcome was painfully obvious at this point.

Giving up he glanced at his watch. He could conceivably grab a couple more hours of sleep before check out, but he was too wired on the cocktail of emotions surging through him to think there was any chance of that.

There was the normal, regular person stuff to address. It had been two days and he was still wearing the same clothes that he had dragged himself up out of the ground in. He was still walking around unarmed except for his hand to hand skills. He snorted when he thought of a phone because apparently everyone he might want to call had stopped using them after he died.

At any rate, he had money in his pocket now, thanks to last night's foray into Pontiac's seedier nightlife. Dealing with some of the needs of basic survival was at least something he could accomplish. It didn't count for much, but it was something that he could do without some bull crap sabotaging him. After two days of running into walls that did feel kind of good.

He rose to gather his things, a familiar routine clicked play in his head, and then snagged when he remembered that his "things" currently consisted of a spiral notebook turned hunter's journal, a couple of pens emblazoned with the Sweet Dreams Traveler's Rest logo, a porno mag, and the last remnants of some illegal junk food.

God, he wanted so badly to just pop Baby's trunk and...see...BABY! The memory rushed back with a force that made him stagger. He could almost hear the creak of her door, like a greeting she always had for him, no matter the hour, no matter how long he's been away, every time the reassuring, "welcome home, Dean" creak of the driver's side door.

He closed his eyes and felt the comfortable set of her wheel under his hand, his body slotted into the seat just right, like lovers that had long since learned to fit together an did so without awkward tangles and clumsy fumbling, He heard the sweet growl of her engine, a challenge to any road to outlast her.

How could he have forgotten Baby? "I'm so sorry, sweetheart." he found himself whispering. Where ever Sam was, whatever he was doing, he had better be taking good care of her.

He felt somehow renewed, revitalized after the draining night and disappointing morning. Baby had always been a source of comfort for him, since the vibration of her carriage had rocked him to sleep, slouched up against Sammy's car seat, the heavy beat of classic rock for a lullaby. Even just the memory, even though she wasn't here, just the memory meant so much. Maybe because there was no way he was going to call her only to find the number non-functional he thought disdainfully.

He looked at the door, and part of him could almost believe that when he stepped through she would be there, faithfully waiting, just like she always was, but another knew she wouldn't be. Suddenly, he wasn't sure if he could do it, open the door, only for her to be conspicuous in her absence. It felt like more than he could face up to.

The familiar altered state, not quite reality feeling was pressing in him hard, with an almost suffocating pressure. Like when he'd reached for the tape player, or heard John speaking, he slipped into a memory that had nothing to do with stored information, but more to do with habit, the everyday routine of just being Dean Winchester. He knew how this one went.

He'd played this scene thousands of times before. He'd open the door, and there she would be right where he always parked her, in the nearest space to the room door.

Shakily he stepped towards the door. It loomed in front of him, seeming impossibly large, and oddly distorted. A white noise sound filled his ears as he approached. Almost without knowing what he was doing, he reached for the knob.

_She would always be there_

It tuned in his hand, achingly slowly.

_...right where he'd parked her_

The tumbler clicked.

_...faithfully waiting for him_

He pulled the door open a crack

_...just like a loyal steed_

The door cleared his field of vision.

_ **She was always there.** _

He raised his eyes.

The empty parking space mocked him with its exsistence.

Robotically he turned back into the room, shut the door, and had his one allowed meltdown for the day.

He missed his checkout.


	12. Shatter Me

To Dean, losing things was just a fact of life, starting with Mom, and in a way, Dad too, because John Winchester, loving family man had died that night, right along with his wife. John Winchester, obsessed, revenge driven hunter had risen to take his place. Dean had learned quickly not to bother making friends that would just be left behind when his family moved on.

Even those he had allowed in he never got to keep. Pastor Jim-dead, Caleb-dead, Ash, Ronald, Victor-dead, loss after loss, over the course of a lifetime, a pile of pain that just kept getting bigger. And he had dealt with that. Sure, with the help of too much booze, too much anger, too much blocking it out with the overpowering physical sensations found in an endless stream of one night stands, still better, in his opinion, than letting it crush you into a useless basket case that couldn't make it out from under the weight of the pain to crawl out of bed in the morning. So yeah, by the time Lilith's hound had drug his soul down into the pit, his life pretty much added up to a great big pile of suck anyway, and while he didn't like it, he had endured it, kept moving forward and doing his job.

This, this whatever the fudge (where had that come from?) this was, was a whole new level of suck. This morning seemed to have opened the floodgates full. As he'd lain, curled on the floor, just inside the door, which was as far as he had gotten, tears and anguish, broken sobs pouring out of him, the still unrecovered pieces of his life had poured in to fill the void, his life in fast forward. Friends had been rememebered only to be lost again moments later, bloody deaths and incompatible lifestyles ripping people from him before he could fully embrace the renewed memories of the good times that had been.

It was losing everything all over again, all at once, and it was too much. The sack in which he had shoved every hurt he had refused to face and deal with at the time had been ripped open, and the contents shook out over him, threatening to tear him apart just as completely as that hell hound had. It had been a mercy when the combination of exhaustion and overstimulation had made him pass out.

That's where they had found him, fetal position on the floor, heart pounding, pulse racing despite being out cold, drenched in his own sweat, shivering and whimpering like a frightened, wounded animal.

He woke panicked, the lion's share of thirty years worth of memories clamoring in his brain, his vision fuzzy, and a high pitched, rapid beep, beep, beep, filling his ears. He bolted upright and was suddenly at the center of a noisy confusion, more than one set of hands grabbing at him, trying to push him back to prone as he struggled against them, growling incoherent threats at unseen attackers.

An insistent voice forced its way through to chaos, "Sir, can you hear me? You need to calm down. We're here to help, but I need you to calm down. Vistoril, ten cc's!"

He surged forward in one last effort to break free of whatever had ahold of him, and then an entirely pleasant relaxation washed over him and he let himself fall backwards into it feeling better than he had in days.

"Yeah, I can do that," he slurred through a giddy smile. "Calm, nice and calm." he turned his head to the face that went with the voice. "So," he asked, "come here often?"


	13. Hello, Nurse!

The next time he woke up went much better. For starters, he was able to do it without putting the whole ward on red alert. Slowly cracking his eyes open he took in the stark white walls and the collection of medical beepy machines. Hospital, great, just please don't let me be dead this time.

He shifted, leveraging himself up on his elbow to get a better look around while his brain tried to piece together just what brand of Winchester stupidity had landed him here. The last thing he remembered was the motel room, he'd been leaving, heading out to Baby. He collapsed back onto the bed, no that wasn't right. He'd been going out expecting to see Baby because he was in one of his weird, half real, half memory delusion things. She hadn't been there, because how could she be?

Everything did seem a lot more clear now. The sketchy, dissected memories that had flashed through his head in bits and pieces for two days finally seemed to have sorted themselves out into something like a complete recollection of a normal human life. Well, not normal, but everything seemed to be complete and in its proper order.

The perception was weird though. Nothing seemed hazy, or distant. All of it was clear, vivid, as if his entire life had just happened recently instead of over the course of three decades. He poked around and watched as Mary told him he was going to be a big brother, and it was just as clear as last night's bar crawl, more so in fact, since he hadn't been drunk at the time.

He let himself enjoy that for a minute. He wasn't even sure he had still recalled the event, even before he'd died, beyond knowing that it must have had happened. He replayed Mary telling him that the baby was going to come and live with them sometime around Easter. He smirked, she had been so sure that Sam was going to be a girl. Guess she figured that since she and John already had a boy that it would just work out that way. Kinda had, Dean joked with himself. Either way, Dean was going to be a big brother, and man, had he loved the way that felt, proud, and important, and a little scared, but good scared, all at the same time.

He realized he was smiling, an actual sincere, big ass, goofy smile. Feeling that again, having it back from under the crap pile that had buried it was almost worth everything he had gone through getting there. He just hoped his brain was done hopping around like a sugared up toddler and ready to behave.

"Well, I see you're awake. How are you feeling?" a female voice interrupted his thoughts.

Better than I did." he answered, turning his gaze and got an immediate reminder of why he had a thing for nurses. "In fact," he went on, "if you're free tonight..."

"Easy there, lady's man," she chuckled, "I need to take your vitals."

"Oh yeah, sure, safety first," he shifted his arm so she could wrap the blood pressure cuff. "Make sure I'm firing on all cylinders before we..."

"Shhh," she ignored him in favor of watching the gauge as the cuff deflated. "Not bad." she noted. The velcro ripped loudly as she removed the cuff.

"Not bad?” Dean asked, pretending to sound hurt, “Sweetheart, I am awesome."

"I'm sure you are." her fingers probed his wrist in search of the pulse point, "but let's take care of one thing at a time, all right?"

Dean obediently stayed quiet while she counted, eyes on her watch.

Seeing the watch made him think of something. "Hey, How long have I been here?" he asked as she was jotting results on his chart.

"Let's see,” she skimmed the paperwork, “looks like you were brought in just after noon, so between seven and eight hours. Open."

He opened his mouth to say something, but was cut off when she shoved a thermometer into it. "M tht oo 'id 'at i' 'e ea' 'ow." he grumbled around it.

"Don't talk." she instructed but flashed him an impish sort of grin that left him thinking it was a good thing she had already taken his pulse. He sulked a little while they waited. Every pretty girl he met lately, there was always something more important going on than getting little Dean some rec time.

"I thought you did that in the ear now." he repeated when she pulled the thermometer out.

"Usually, but you know, you're just so darned special." she cooed, pinching his cheek playfully.

"Damn straight." he agreed, eating up the attention. This whole thing had been a monster pain in the ass, but he was enjoying this part.

"All right, you're all set. Doctor will be in to see you shortly. Anything else you need before I go?" she asked.

"Oh....so much." he said longingly, "but," he continued hastily as she started to leave with an indulgent eye roll, "I haven't eaten all day."

She nodded, "I'll have a tray sent in. Think you can behave until then?'

"No chance." he smirked.

"I bet not." she laughed and went out.

Dean sat up and leaned forward in the bed so he could watch her walk away for as long as possible.


	14. Trust Me, I'm A Doctor

One of the immutable laws of the universe is that hospital food sucks, but Dean was so hungry that he didn't care. He hadn't been eating a lot lately for a regular person. For him, he'd practically been on starvation rations. He'd only had one real meal a day since he'd been topside, and today he hadn't even supplemented with snack cakes and bar pretzels.

It wasn't the worst he'd ever had. It wasn't as good as nuked Gas Mart burritos, but better than prison food. Something about just knowing that when 24 hours before he'd been wracking his brain, trying to pry loose the phone number of the man who was practically a second father to him made everything a little bit better.

The freaky, total recall, everything fresh and new thing was kind of unnerving, mostly because he didn't know what was causing it, but he'd take it over constantly having to remind himself of his own name. Maybe it was just a normal side effect of hitting the rewind button on death. He didn't remember Sam having had any memory problems, and right now, if he had, there was no way Dean wouldn't recall it, but then, Sam had only been dead for two days.

He hadn't remembered being dead, so for all Dean knew, he had told his reaper to shove it and had never really left. Dean, on the other hand, had been dragged straight down to Hell's half acre, no reaper needed. Maybe you had to move on before you could remember dying. That made some sense. He'd encountered more than one ghost that had had no idea. Death echos mostly, but more developed ones too, like Molly. It was hard to say. He hadn't made habit of sitting around with them chatting about it. That was Samy's gig.

Hell, he realized, based on his own out of body vacation after Yellow Eyes, it was a safe bet that there were few confused spooks prowling the halls of this place right now.

The lights flickered, crackling softly.

Dean bolted up, tensely scanning the room. His hand groped around his tray in search of the half empty salt packet.

Nothing happened.

Nothing continued to happen.

He relaxed a little, not all the way. Lights flickered sometimes, didn't always mean spirits, and now that he thought about it, he wasn't even sure that they had. He remembered it, but he also remembered it not happening.

Damnit, no! He thought he'd gotten a handle on this thing, thought it was running its course, but apparently it was just mutating. One thing was sure. It was time to admit that he was in no shape to handle this alone. He had zero chance of figuring this out if he couldn't even trust his own mind to stay anchored in reality, hell he couldn't even trust his own senses. That's it, as soon as he could find a new ride he was shagging ass to Sioux Falls. If he couldn't get Bobby on the phone the surly old guy would damn well answer when Dean pounded on his door.

That should have been his first move, which seemed so obvious now. Sure, he hadn't remembered Bobby at first, and then it had just been a name that had popped up frequently in the delusion fueled ramblings he had spilled out on a motel telephone pad. At that point, it had just been a label, a meaningless stand in for an unknown factor that could just as easily been replaced with "somebody" or "that guy".

It hadn't been until in the bar, focused on what was going to be a truly impressive, game winning, two rail bank shot that a gruff voice had scolded him, "Ya idjit, the game's on the line with money on the table. Just sink the shot. Don't get fancy." that it had started to mean anything beyond that.

This morning, however, reasonable attempts to reach out and touch someone having gone bust, he should have found the first available car to borrow and pointed it towards South Dakota first thing. Instead, he'd been planning to go shopping. Yup, he definitely needed help. Hell, he needed a freakin' baby sitter.

A gentle knock announced the arrival of the doctor he'd been told to expect. He was a tall, lean man with greying hair and Clark Kent glasses. "So," he glanced at Dean's chart, "Rocky, how are you feeling tonight?"

"Oh, just peachy, doc." Dean answered. "So if you could just let me sign whatever it is I need to sign, and give me my clothes back, I'll get out of your hair and you can give this bed to someone that's sick."

The doctor chuckled, "Well, I hope you won't mind if I double check your diagnosis first. It's kind of what they pay me for, so I feel like I should at least make the effort."

Dean weighed demanding release versus just letting the game play out by the civilian rules and opted for the latter. He'd decided he liked the doctor, and he did have a few questions of his own. "Yeah, OK, knock yourself out. So stick out my tongue? Turn my head an cough?"

The doctor smiled, flipping through the chart, "Rocky, I'm Dr Cornic. You were brought in this afternoon catatonic, with highly elevated respiratory and pulmonary rates, and suffering what might have been a mild seizure. Looks like your blood work and tox screen came back clean, so any idea what might have caused that?"

  
  


_Yeah, I somehow came back from the dead, sans memories, and then my whole life got together to beat the crap out of me because I couldn't find my car._

  
  


"I...um, I didn't really sleep last night." Dean supplied, "and I'd been drinking on an empty stomach."

"Anything unusual happen yesterday or last night, aside from not sleeping?" he made a note on the chart.

  
  


_Anything unusual? Only everything._

  
  


"Nope." Dean lied, pretending to have thought about it for a second first.

Cornic nodded, "Do you have a history of sleep problems, Rocky?"

  
  


_Only nightmares, and finding the time._

  
  


"I've never been a real big sleeper. Missing a night here and there is pretty much standard."

Cornic marked the chart again, "How much did you drink?"

"Four, five beers over as many hours."

"Are you usually a heavy drinker?"

"Not considering. Look, I'd really like to just get out of here. It was what it was. I'm fine now."

Cornic frowned, "Your pulse rate and Blood Pressure are still a little high, not dangerously so, but considering what happened, I'm not comfortable releasing you at this point."

Dean bristled, "You can't hold me here against my will."

"No, we can't, and we wouldn't try, but I also don't want to just let you walk out of here under the circumstances if I can help it." With a sigh, he returned the chart to its place. "Is there someone we can call for you?" he asked.

I wish, Dean thought bitterly as he shook his head.

"I'm assuming your name isn't really Rocky Horror. Am I right?"

Dean chuckled softly. They must had gotten that from the Moolight's records. He'd been a little silly drunk when he'd registered. "My dad had a weird last name. My mom had a weird sense of humor." he shrugged off the question.

Cornic looked unconvinced but didn't challenge it.

"Um, look, doc, I'm assuming they found me passed out when they came to kick me out for missing check out and called an ambulance, right? There was some stuff in my room..."

"I wouldn't know about that. Anything that came in with you will be stored with your clothes, in there." he indicated a cupboard against the wall. "Rocky," he began carefully, "it's late, and my guess is you don't have a permanent place, at least not locally. Let me transfer you to recovery and stay one night for observation. If you have another attack, you'll be where you can get help right away instead of alone somewhere. A bed's a bed, right?"

Dean considered this and it made sense. "Any chance of a sponge bath in that deal?" he asked remembering the pretty nurse from earlier.

Cornic laughed, "You have to do your own negotiations on that one. I'll arrange to have you moved." He stopped at the door, "Are you sure there's no one we can call?"

Dean briefly considered giving them Bobby's number on the off chance that they might have some better luck than he had but decided against it. There'd be no point. "Thanks but no, doc. Looks like for now, it's just me."


	15. Gray's Calamity

Between the stress attack and the drugs they'd pumped into him, Dean had slept most of the day, so he wasn't really tired now. He was worn, not just physically, but mentally, and he figured that he could actually use another few hours before he felt back up to specs, but not right this minute.

A likely indigant emergency case hadn't rated a private room, a factor Dean wished he had taken into account when he'd agreed to this arrangement. He hadn't, which is how he'd ended up sitting here, working on his de facto journal while trying to block out the loud snores from the other side of a privacy curtain.

He'd been relieved to see that the notebook had made the journey with him, as had, thankfully, his pool winnings. No such luck with the skin mag, which wasn't all that important, but still pissed him off. Was nothing sacred?

He was working on comparative accounts of his and Sam's resurrections, in an effort to find some clue as to how and why he was even back, and why he had come back so weird when the silence of the room was shattered suddenly by the TV snapping on to blare a miracle product infomercial.

"Dude, Seriously?" he growled at the curtain but got only a mumbled, snorting response containing nothing that could be called an actual word. He reached over to pull the curtain aside and peeked through. His roomie shifted over onto his side, grumbling in his sleep, apparently no more pleased with the noise than Dean himself was.

Confused, he let the curtain fall back in place, clicked the TV off with the remote and tried to get back to work.

Seconds later the TV burst back to life. Before Dean could angrily grab the remote, or fully appreciate the benefits of a spring loaded, concealed blade screwdriver the lights flashed violently, crackling loudly and making the room smell of ozone. Dean scrambled from the bed, now fully alert, senses on edge.

The room's external window began to rattle, shaking visibly. Dean moved closer to examine what was happening and barely leapt back in time to protect his eyes when it exploded inwards on him. He stumbled to the floor, landing hard enough to knock the air from his lungs. Glass shards that now littered the area cut into his forearms and knees as he dragged his way across the floor, which was becoming slick with blood from his fresh wounds. His mind scrambled in search of the most likely nearby source of salt or iron.

"Christo!" he yelled gutturally as a high pitched screech, like metal on metal, assaulted his ears and grew steadily louder. It dug painfully into his skull until all he could do was cover his bleeding ears and try not to scream.

"What's going on here?" a stern voice demanded.

Dean opened his eyes.

The floor was clean, no glass, no blood. He whipped his head around and saw the intact window. The room was quiet, no blaring TV, no deafening icepick of a noise gouging into his brain through his eardrums. Nothing was out of place except Dean himself. He pushed himself half prone and continued to survey the room in confusion. "What the hell?" he muttered.

"That's what I'd like to know." the no nonsense looking nurse in the doorway responded. "Here," she stepped into the room, "let's get you up." Dean batted her hands away when she tried to help him to his feet.

"I um, I sleepwalk sometimes." he explained. "I'll just... go back to bed. Sorry for the trouble."

"Mmm hmm," she muttered, assessing both him and the situation as she got him resettled. "Just try to go back to sleep. Would you like something to help knock you out?"

"No, it's fine. I'll be fine." he assured her.

"Ok, you can ring if you change your mind." she started to leave and then turned back. "Oh and honey, I'm Catholic too, so I encourage prayer, but next time, not at the top of your lungs, OK? God's listening. You don't have to yell." She went out.

Dean sat up in the bed and looked around the quiet, undisturbed room. Vivid memories of the chaos were still fresh in his mind. "No seriously," he said to no one, "What, the, hell?"


	16. Nothing To See

It was well after midnight, so the parking structure was both darkened and empty. Dean hadn't even had to bother with disabling the one security camera he had found since it was out of order anyway. He picked himself a mid 90s Camry and put Pontiac Community General in the rearview mirror.

He drove straight through and by the soft light of an early morning he was turning down a familiar road on the outskirts of Sioux Falls that lead the closest thing he had to a home outside of Baby, Singer Auto Salvage.

He was buzzing a little. It had been a long hard road getting here, but this was finally some progress. Bobby would know where Sam was. Hell, he realized, odds were pretty high that Sam would be at Bobby's, and the thought filled him with an eager anticipation. Almost as good, if anyone would have any idea what had brought him back, and what had gotten knocked out of alignment in the process, it would be Bobby. Failing that, he'd at least have some idea how to go about figuring it out. Things were about to start getting a whole lot better for Dean Winchester.

**XXXXX**

He'd had to get out of the car and actually walk the ground himself before his mind would accept it. This was definitely the right spot. He'd know it with his eyes closed. He stood where the front door should have been, but just inexplicably wasn't. He walked forward through what should have been the living room. Here, he stopped, should be the kitchen doorway.

He turned to the right and glared at the spot where the god damned refrigerator should have been holding the god damned beer, that he could sure god damned well use right now. He stalked off in a different direction to the spot that should house the phones that went with the numbers that he had stressed himself into an anxiety attack trying to retrieve. No wonder none of them had worked.

"Are you freakin' kidding me?" he yelled at the sky. "Is this a joke? Cause it ain't funny!" He fumed pacing aimlessly around the empty field, not "the place burned down", or "got bulldozed" empty, but "untouched, never was anything here" empty. Dean would have given anything for just one familiar wall so he'd have something to put his fist through.

"This is hell, isn't it?" he continued ranting. "This is how it works! You give somebody hope and then jerk it away and watch them twist! Is that it?" The clouds silently rolled by overhead.

"Answer me, you god damned demonic sons of bitches!" Somewhere in the distance a crow cawed.

"Damn," he muttered, almost too softly to even hear himself. At this point, he'd welcome Hell. Pain he understood. Pain he could do because it was familiar. Right now, he couldn't imagine anything so painful that it wouldn't be preferable to everything he knew being yanked out from under him over and over, leaving him no solid place to stand, no reality in which to anchor himself. Torture, at least, would be something real to hold on to, the pain carrying with it reassurances of his own existence. Dean Winchester's philosophy of life, I hurt, therefore I am.

His mind replayed the image of the hospital room exploding around him, leaving no evidence in its wake. Had he imagined it? Or had it happened, and then the world...what? Reset and went back to the last save point?

And what was happening here? He remembered Sam, Bobby, a whole life, but just like the hospital, none of those memories seemed to come with any attached evidence of actually having happened. He couldn't know that any of it was real, or that he was even who he thought he was. An awful feeling barreled through his gut and he had to fight the urge to hurl.

"Ok," he reasoned, trying to calm himself, "maybe I'm not remembering, maybe I'm just imagining things. Maybe I'm in a rubber room or a coma, or bleeding out in some dirty alley, but right now, right here, this is the reality I've got, so I'm going to do what I always do, work the case."

As he roared down the road with renewed determination, he thought bitterly that Sioux Falls had god damned well better be there, or there'd be hell to pay.


	17. Journalism 101

He couldn't bring himself to be disappointed as he hung up the phone. When he'd called information and requested a number for Singer Salvage, or Bobby Singer, in the hopes that the yard had simply been relocated rather than just non-exsistant, he hadn't allowed himself to get his hopes up. It would have been too easy, and when the hell was anything ever that easy? He could put it down as a dead lead and move on.

Before checking into the latest in a long line of temporary homes he had finally taken the time to hit some stores to equip some essentials. It was a long way from knowing that Baby was right outside the door, her trunk packed with an extensive arsenal that would cover most usual situations, nine times out of ten, but it was a step up from a plastic shopping bag holding a spiral notebook and a couple of off brand twinkies, that's for sure.

He moved awkwardly, trying to work the stiffness out of the new jeans. Stiff from being new, however, felt so much better than stiff due to an ever increasing level of ground in filth that he was much happier not thinking about now that he'd been able to shower and change.

Taking a seat at the table, he pulled out his new journal. He'd intentionally chosen one as close to John's as he could find. He ran his fingers over the surface of the new leather cover letting his mind drift over all the times he'd handled its predecessor. It was a pale copy of Dad's at best.

Dad's journal had been a treasure trove of information, filled with clues, advice, leads, contacts, even incites into John himself. This one, while it looked very much the same was new, young like a rookie hunter waiting to be honed to the skill that only experience could bring. It was empty, a poor copy of John's, and yet it helped Dean feel a connection to his absent father. After all, how had Dean ever viewed himself but as an empty, poor copy of John? It all made a painful sort of sense.

The journal was a hunter's tradition that Dean had never really bothered with. John as the head of the family had had it covered at first. Later, Sam had maintained an ever growing database of all the case research he did. Dean used to tease him about the OCD way that he had everything cataloged and cross referenced.

Things were different now. Dean was on his own until he could figure this thing out, so he was going to have to do his own homework. No more copying off the smart kid.

He opened the book to its first page, which taunted him with its stark, white, blankness. He wondered if this was how John had felt that first time, looking at a vast emptiness, waiting to be filled with timeless wisdoms and unearthed secrets, knowing that it was he himself that would have to provide them.

He had been, Dean realized, the same age that Dean was now. For the first time, he saw his father, not as he knew him, a legend among hunters, but as the untrained, know nothing rookie he certainly must have been at the beginning, in a time that Dean had still been too young to have any real understanding of what their lives had become. He'd never thought of Dad that way, a young man, broken by grief, facing a world where everything he thought he had known had turned out to be wrong, and unlike Dean, with two kids along for the ride in the bargain. He must, despite motivation to the point of obsession, been scared to death.

  
  


_ **I went to Missouri, and I learned the truth.** _

  
  


Now that Dean thought about it, that sentence read like it had just been written for the sake of writing something, anything to destroy the daunting blankness of the page and begin the process. They were the words of a man, not yet a hunter, unskilled and naive, just figuring out a confusing new world as best he could as he went along.

Dean picked up the pen.

**My name is Dean Winchester.**

**I am a hunter.**

Looking at the words, the blankness of the page destroyed, he remembered that he had first written those words because Dad had told him to. Well not Dad exactly, but close enough considering that he didn't know how real anything was right now, including himself.

Over two decades apart, two men about the leave their 20s behind them forever, facing new worlds they didn't understand had performed the same ritual, taking the first step with essentially pointless declarations that translated effectively to: It has begun.

Dean just looked at the words for a long time, because he knew he would never again be able to read them without feeling John right there beside him.

  
  



	18. Connect The Dots

When he woke the next morning, Dean felt better rested and more himself than he had since this whole crazy ride had started. Last night had been cathartic, not in the way being driven to tears or outbursts was. That, while cleansing, had a way of leaving a person feeling used up, crumpled. This, by contrast, had been more quiet, gentler. He'd been left focused enough to actually get some productive work done instead of driven to a useless exhaustion.

It was nice to rise feeling ready to face the day and to have an actual direction to go in. He'd formulated a few theories.

Possibility one: He was still in Hell. Not a lot he could do about that one, except not let the bastards break him.

Possibilty two: He was crazy. Again, not much he could do except wait until the white coats decided to up his meds.

Possibility three: He was dreaming. That one he could do something about, but he wanted to keep "commit suicide and hope for the best" low on the list of options.

That left him with possibility four: There were any number of supernatural creatures that could mess with human perceptions. Reapers and Djinn had been the first to leap to mind.

Following that line of thinking he'd listed all he could think of, cringeing a bit when he'd added tricksters to the list, and set about recording all the information he could recall about each one.

His messed up memory perception had come in pretty handy for that process. His memories, unfaded by the passage of time had made for an extensive resource to draw from. By the time he had called it a night he'd managed to emasse a pretty comprehensive body of data and had even managed to eliminate a few possibilities in the process. It was a good start. All he had to do now was keep plugging at it until he narrowed the field to the most promising leads.

He was in the shower when he'd discovered the gash on his arm. It wasn't deep, just above the bend of his left elbow. He examined it curiously, wondering how the hell it had happened. Things had been a non-stop parade of crazy, and it was conceivable that he could have injured himself in any number of ways without noticing while his mind was out to lunch, but this looked fresh, not older than a day.

He reviewed the events of yesterday while he toweled off and dressed.

He'd reached Bobby's that morning, and of course, the paranoid old bastard hadn't believed he was him. He'd come at him with a silver knife, and Dean had been forced to stumble back, babbling Bobby's backstory in an effort to convince him. He'd eventually had to resort to cutting himself to prove he wasn't a shifter or a revenant.

OK, he thought as he laced up his boots, that explained it. In fact, he wasn't quite sure now why he had even been confused about it.

  
  


_He turned to the right and glared at the spot where the god damned refrigerator should have been holding the god damned beer, that he could sure god damned well use right now._

  
  


He froze. Wait...a...minute...

  
  


_"Answer me, you god damned demonic sons of bitches!"_

  
  


In less than a minute he was out the door. In five, he was tearing out of Sioux Falls heading towards Bobby's. Evidence, he had evidence. His arm was cut. He had cut it at Bobby's with Bobby's own knife. It had happened because he had the wound to prove it. He pressed the gas pedal to the floor.

**XXXXX**

Finding the field that should have been Singer Salvage as empty as it had been yesterday had almost been enough to drive him into another emotional implosion, but the thought that something was doing this to him, probably for its own twisted amusement, made him determined to keep himself contained. Damned if he was going to give the sadistic son of a bitch, whatever it was, the satisfaction.

He checked the area on foot again and even resorted to calling Bobby's name a few times before giving up and returning to the car. He tried not to think of how he could practically feel Bobby's arms around him, almost hear the gruff voice saying, "It's good to see you boy."

The memory felt so real, but then, the memory of wandering in confusion in the empty space and raging at the sky felt equally real. The cut on his arm was definitely real, but so was the fact that, clearly, there was nothing here now. Maybe he should have gotten a head scan before leaving the hospital, if he had ever been in the hospital to begin with.

With a resigned sigh he pulled out the journal and recorded the details of both his yesterdays, glancing up every now and again, on the off chance that the salvage yard had decided to rematerialize at some point.

That task finished, he started the car and headed back to town. Whatever else was going on, he still had to eat, so he'd get some breakfast. Then he'd hit an electronics store. He wanted to go back out to Bobby's...not Bobby's with an EMF. Probably wouldn't be a bad idea to check if Sioux Falls could boast a psychic that seemed legit. He tried to remember if Bobby had ever mentioned one.

He'd try to give Missouri a call, but that honestly would probably be as useful as his calls to Sam and Bobby had been. That's OK though because he was Dean Winchester, hunter, and he would figure this out, or know the reason why.


	19. Labyrinth

Starting over from scratch was turning out to be a raging pain in the ass. Dean had never realized just how spoiled he had been by the stockpile of tools of the trade that had always just been there. Oh sure, once in a while he had to make a new ID, or jury rig a piece of equipment, like his walkman turned EMF, but for the most part, the basics had been available his whole career as a hunter. He'd been picking it up in pieces since before he hit puberty, most of the earliest stuff inherited from John.

By the time his father had handed him Baby's keys and told him that there was no need to return them, her trunk was already well stocked. In the years that followed, he'd filled in any gaps when needed, which wasn't often, so that whether he needed a silver bullet or a badge to flash, all he had to do was pop the trunk and retrieve it. He only now fully appreciated just how easy that part had been.

He'd been reviewing the morning's events over breakfast, consoling himself with a double side of extra bacon when a new idea had occurred to him, a vanity search Sam would have called it.

While most of his life had been lived off the radar, there were places that he had left fingerprints on the system. There was his birth record for starters. Beyond that, there was more than one arrest. He'd died in both St. Louis and Monument. He'd made the FBI database after the Milwaukee case had splashed him all over the evening news. Sam had been jealous about that, even if he wouldn't admit it. Dean Winchester had left a mark.

A simple internet search would bring up all kinds of information, evidence, no, proof, proof of existence and he'd be able to lay the nagging fears about it to rest. He'd still have the problem of sorting out the false memories form the real ones, and clearly, if he was "remembering" two different versions of the same events, at least one of them had to be false, At least he could stop freaking out that maybe they were all false, rendering him...what, a product of his own imagination? He closed his eyes and shook the idea from his head. He didn't want to think about that. It gave him a headache.

And, thanks to the marvels of modern technology, very soon he would never have to again.

He got directions to the nearest library from the waitress, left her with a winning smile and a generous tip, and set off the answer the question that had plagued mankind for centuries, that of one's own exsistance, not a bad days work.

And that's where it all fell apart.

While the library computers were available for public use, it turned out that access required a library card. The librarian had assured him that acquiring one was a simple and painless procedure, requiring only a photo ID and proof of a local address. She informed him his driver's license would fill both requirements. He responded by asking directions to the nearest copy shop.

He was halfway there when it hit him, that a photo ID was going to require a photo. Frustrated he jerked the wheel, swerving into the first parking lot he saw, coming to rest with a screech of rubber on pavement in the empty part of the lot, furthest from the storefronts, where no one ever parked unless it was Christmas season. "Damn it!" he yelled, slamming the wheel with both fists. How did normal people do this?

He'd been sixteen when he'd killed his first werewolf, the same age most kids got their first driver's license. Now, here he was, stuck like a rat in a maze, trying to navigate the correct route to a driver's license, and he'd much rather be tracking a werewolf.

Although, he'd better hope that he didn't have to any time soon, because silver bullets and a gun were still on the list of things he didn't have, right along with a photo ID, a library card, and a bottle of 80 proof. That last one he was going to be correcting at the first liquor store he could find.

Unless they carded him...crap.

They carded him and he was shooting somebody...crap!

He hit the steering wheel again.


	20. Picture Perfect

Under other circumstances, Dean wouldn’t have bothered with this at all. Real legit psychics were few and far between. The odds on cold readers and fast talkers were much higher, so normally he would have argued that this whole thing was a waste of time. It sure had proven to be so far. He’d already been through a “gypsy” who’s fake accent had been so bad that he figured anybody who fell for it deserved to get conned, and a professed trance medium who really needed to dial back the special effects if he wanted to come across as believable. Real spirits only expended that kind of energy when something was at stake.

He wasn’t able to come up with a better idea, however. Something he didn’t understand was happening, and the harsh reality was, he couldn’t even be sure whether was happening in the real world, or just in his head. Until he could know for sure or at least have a good reason to lean one way or the other, anything else he tried would be pretty pointless. How the hell was he supposed to investigate when he didn’t know what evidence to trust, couldn’t tell actual events from his imaginings or hallucinations, or whatever the hell they were? He needed somebody that could get inside his head and hopefully sort it out, with any luck, give him some clue as to a way to keep it straight himself.

Missouri, predictably, hadn’t been any more reachable than Sam or Bobby had been. He hoped against hope that somehow her impressive abilities would tip her off that he was trying to reach her and that she would contact him. Slim hope, but he was running short on options, which is what had led him to be desperate enough to be standing at this door in a poorly maintained building on the low rent side of town. He raised his hand to knock.

The door jerked open before he had the chance.

The kid was pretty unimpressive, maybe 19 or 20, skinny enough to make Dean wonder how his baggy shorts stayed up, dark hair, nearly but not quite black, pulled back in a sloppy ponytail. A tattered Avril Lavine T-shirt hung loosely on his frame, giving him the appearance of an under stuffed scarecrow.

“Giovanni D’Marco?” Dean asked uncertainly, pretty sure there’d been some sort of mistake.

“Maybe, who wants to know?” the kid responded.

Dean wasn’t in the mood for games. “Is this your ad?” he held up a page ripped from a local directory.

“You mean the one that says, ‘by appointment only’?” the boy pointed out dryly.

“Five minutes,” Dean quipped. With a flick of his wrist, he was holding up a folded twenty dollar bill between two fingers.

The kid looked Dean over curiously, seemingly uninterested in the money. “You’d better come in.” he said, stepping back to make way. “You can call me Gi, by the way. Everybody does.”

Dean stepped through the door into what turned out to be a tiny studio apartment that made his own usual housing options seem glamorous by comparison. “Have a seat.” his host invited as he headed off towards a sectioned off corner that served as a makeshift kitchenette. “Sorry about the mess. I usually straighten up if I know a client’s coming by.”

“Yeah, sorry about that,” Dean said sheepishly, claiming a spot on the threadbare lumpy sofa, “I was in the neighborhood.”

“Forget it,” Gi waved it off. “You want coffee?” he offered as he poured himself a cup from a coffee maker that sputtered its way through the struggle to complete its cycle without shaking apart. Despite it being well past noon, it was obvious that Dean had arrived during what Gi personally considered to be early morning.

“I’m good, thanks,” Dean answered, trying to find a comfortable spot where he wasn’t being stabbed by a spring.

Gi was shoveling heaping spoonfuls of sugar into his own mug. He took a sip, grimaced, and added another overflowing spoonful before deeming the coffee drinkable. “I think there’s some pizza left from the other day.” he offered indicating a box that sat on a wooden spool that served as a coffee table.

“Thanks, I’m fine.” Dean answered, casting a suspicious eye towards the grease spotted box. Gi still hadn’t made any mention of the money, so Dean just dropped it on the spool. He was already pretty sure it would have done him just as much good to have just set it on fire.

Gi exited the kitchenette, mug in hand, and grabbed ahold of a folded lawn chair that leaned up against the wall. He flipped it open with one hand and settled down across the spool. “So what can I do for you, De...ude?” he asked.

Probably nothing, Dean figured, but he was just desperate enough to let this play out. “I’ve been having, I guess you could call them visions.”

“Can’t help you.” Gi concluded quickly, “I don’t do dream interp. I can give you the number of a friend of mine. She’s a total scam artist, but she hits more than she misses.” He made a dreamy face, “Looks good doing it, too, so if it goes bust, you can just consider it a date. It’ll cost you about the same.”

“Yeah, um, no,” Dean rejected the offer. “I’m actually more interested in the source, what’s causing them.”

“Now that I can do.” Gi said nodding. “It’s a process though, sort of like therapy, takes time.”

Of course it does, Dean thought cynically, lot’s of billable visits, “OK, forget that.” Dean looked at the ad, “It says here, ‘I’ll find what you need.’ Does that mean missing persons?”

“I ain’t a GPS, Dude. I’m more like a, whadaya call it, a compass. I can point you in the right direction.”

So far, this had been a whole lot of nothing, but as lame as it was, it was still more promising than the two earlier attempts. “Cool, how’s that work?” he asked, figuring he might as well follow through since he was already here and out the twenty bucks.

“If you mean, ‘why can I do it’, no clue. Some people are just born extra, you know, DaVinci, Mozart, my girl Avril. If you mean my process,” he rose and crossed the room to the single window the room could boast and dragged the heavy curtain that graced it closed. “I’m not a performance artist, so if you’re looking for a lot of ‘oh spirit’ chanting and freaky foreign babble, there’s this gypsy lady…”

“No thanks,” Dean saved him the trouble, “been there, done that, wasn’t impressed.”

“Cool,” Gi dropped the subject, retrieving a large candle from a cinder block and scrap wood bookshelf. He returned to drop back into the lawn chair and pushed the pizza box to one side to make room for the candle. “Low light helps you relax.” he explained striking a match and touching it to the wick, “so does the sandalwood. The more relaxed you are, the less likely I am to sprain something.”

Dean wasn’t sure how to take all this. The guy definitely wasn’t trying to con him with some bogus window dressing, but it all seemed a little bit underwhelming.

Gi settled back into his chair, his eyes fixed unblinking in Dean’s direction, but seeming to look past him at something off in the distance. “Dude, seriously” he groaned as he broke the stare and pinched the bridge of his nose, eyes squeezed shut, “work with me and chill out a little. You’re like, radiating stress.”

Oh yeah, I wonder why, Dean thought to himself. He took a deep breath and slumped back onto the sofa, feeling like an idiot.

“No, Dude,” Gi tried to explain, “OK, try this. When was the last time you felt really calm, really at peace with yourself? Start by thinking about that.”

Was this guy serious? Dean thought back, more out of cynicism than obedience to the instructions. There hadn’t been a whole lot of calm lately. His day had been all photo IDs, and library cards, and false memories about vanished salvage yards. Not calming. And last night, last night had been…

_ **I am Dean Winchester.** _

_ **I am a hunter.** _

“That’s it, Dude. Go with that.” Gi encouraged him. Dean allowed himself to dwell in the memory, the words at the top of the page creating a conduit that stretched through the years, connecting him to his father, his family, his past, and everything he was, everything he’d drawn his strength from for his whole life. He drifted in a sort of timeless, dreamlike state and allowed himself to enjoy reliving the memory of the cleansing he’d inadvertently given himself. Somewhere beyond it he vaguely heard Gi’s voice murmuring things he couldn’t make out, just background noise.

When he came out of it Gi was jotting something on the greasy receipt salvaged from the pizza box. “There you go,” he said, pushing the paper across the spool towards Dean.

“That’s it?” Dean observed, “That’s a little anti-climactic.”

“You want flash, or you want results?” Gi asked, “because I know a guy that’ll do a whole epileptic melodrama for you, really cuts himself and everything.”

“Results, definitely,” Dean picked up the paper and examined it skeptically. It was an address. “What’s here?” he asked.

“No clue, Dude,” Gi responded, “It’s not my reality. Go, don’t go, write your own story, my man.”

“What do I owe you?” Dean asked, not caring that his disappointment was apparent.

“This’ll do it,” Gi snatched up the twenty from the spool table, seemingly aware of it for the first time since Dean pulled it out.

**XXXXX**

Dean had to wonder how the little owner-op drugstore was still in business. It was a lousy location where a few stubborn businesses clung to life outnumbered heavily by dark windows baring faded ‘for rent’ signs. Weaving his way through tightly packed displays of various housewares and summer clearance, Dean’s irritation grew as he wondered just what it was he was supposed to find here. Nothing would have surprised him at that point, whether finding Sammy in the back, behind the counter filling prescriptions, or Gi popping out of one of the large boxes to yell “gotchya!”

He was pretty sure he’d just been rooked out of twenty bucks, but he might as well get his money’s worth and explore the whole place before admitting it. It wasn’t like any other leads were promising any better use of his time.

He almost couldn’t believe his eyes when he rounded a corner around a display of tacky beach towels and saw it. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered in disbelief, not wasting thought on whether Gi had been legit or just lucky. He hadn’t even known these cheesy, four for a dollar photo booths were still around, thought they’d become a relic of the past like lead paint and disco.

Ten dollars later he was stocked up on head shots for the foreseeable future. It was such a small thing to have taken up an entire day, and yet, successes had been so few and far between on this uphill battle Dean almost felt as if been thrown a lifeline. Legit or not, he owed Gi a nice fruit basket.


	21. Revisionist History

Dean examined every inch of himself as he dried off from his morning shower. If any more mysterious cuts, or bruises, or hickies had developed in the night he wanted to be aware of them. It was getting tiring, living this odd, involuntary double life, two sets of memories crowding into his head, both demanding to be validated. He sighed as he completed his fruitless inspection, two lives and he didn’t seem to be getting any action in either of them.

“_Dean, your chest was ribbons. Your insides were slop, and you’d been buried for four months._

He winced, it hurt. It hurt to think that Bobby was there somehow, just out of reach. Dean could remember, he could remember with vivid, crystal clarity, but he could never be there in the moment. He almost allowed himself to bolt from the room and go racing off to Bobby’s/not Bobby’s again but stopped himself. That hadn’t accomplished anything yesterday.

If he had been out there yesterday. His brain began to chase its own tail and he dropped down on the bed, head in his hands, half groaning, half whining in frustration. He tried to clear his head and start fresh.

He had been at Bobby’s. That much had to be right because both versions agreed on that point at least. OK, good, he could be reasonably sure that he had been there. What he didn’t know was, what had happened there.

He glanced over at the phone. He was going to regret this. He knew he was going to regret this, and yet he couldn’t stop himself from reaching over to lift the receiver from its cradle. He dialed, his gut tightening.

Just let it ring, he thought. Even if Bobby doesn’t answer, just let it ring. Hell, even a message that the number was out of service, disconnected would be better than hearing “no such number” again.

“We’re sorry your number can not be completed as dialed. No such number…”

He hung up.

He’d just go forward with what he did have, little as it was. He was making progress, infuriating, agonizingly slow progress, but progress. He just had to keep shaking the trees until something fell.

“_I know, I should look like a Thriller video reject”_

“Oh shut up,” he said irritably, “not helping, so just shut up.” He dug out a fresh shirt.

“_I remember I was a hell hound’s chew toy.”_

He watched his reflection as he brushed his teeth.

“_Bobby, you should have been looking after him.”_

He ran his fingers through his hair, smoothing out the bed head,

“_I wanted you salted and burned, but Sam wouldn’t have it.”_

He shoved his feet into his boots.

“_...this force, this presence, it just blew past me at a fill up joint.”_

He started lacing up.

Wait, no, that wasn’t right. That had happened at the hospital, only it hadn’t really happened.

Or had it?

He took a deep breath. “OK, focus, Dean,” he closed his eyes and tried to dissect the image.

_He’d been standing at the cash register. There was a TV on the counter. It had turned itself on. He had turned it off._

_No, wait, there had been a TV, but it never turned on. He had sat down to think._

_The TV definitely turned on, he’d been in the bed, working on his journal and the TV turned on._

_He had turned it off._

_No, damn it, it hadn’t been on! We just established that!_

_It had turned back on, the radio too. He’d made a beeline for the shelf with the salt._

_He’d jumped out of the bed. The window had exploded._

_He had sat down to think, trying to sort it all out._

_He was too slow with the salt. The window had exploded. He’d fallen to the floor in the broken glass._

_He’d punched the wall, then broke down and cried._

_He’d fallen to the floor in the broken glass. A nurse had helped him back to bed._

“Damn it!” he yelled, “What the hell?” His fingers gripped tightly at the bedspread, twisting at it, venting the frustrating urge to just rip something apart. “Two wasn’t enough?” he yelled at the ceiling, “We’re going to go three?” Three different versions of the same event, which may or may not have even happened at all, and he had no idea what to do with that. The images warred in his head, shoving one another aside, clamoring like puppies to be the one that got the attention.

Dean really wished he’d gotten around to picking up that bottle. God could he use a drink.

“OK,” he told himself, “That one’s too complicated. Start simpler. Just calm down and get a handle on this.” There had to be a way to tell what’s real, and if he could figure it out, he could maybe find a way to block out all the other noise.

He tried again.

“_Your chest was ribbons. Your insides were slop, and you were buried four months.”_

“… _you were buried for four months.”_

“_four months”_

“_**four months”**_

“No, that can’t be right.” he hastily finished with his boots, left the room, and crossed the parking lot at a determined pace. He had to double check. He had to be sure. No way he was trusting his memory for anything right now.

The girl at the counter looked up from reading the morning paper and smiled at him when he walked in the office, a bell jangling to announce his entrance. “Good morning,” she greeted him, “Did you sleep well?”

“Yeah, freakin’ awesome, like a baby. Do you have” he caught sight of the paper, “that? Is that today’s?”

The girl nodded.

“Do you mind,” he approached the desk, “can I get a quick look?”

“Sure,” she slid it towards him.

He snatched it up and rifled it until he found what he was looking for. There it was, top of the page, black and white, Sept. 23, 2010.

_continuity error_

Dean’s face broke into a satisfied smirk, “Gotchya,” he whispered triumphantly.

XXXXX

Whatever else was going wrong, Dean mused as he dug into his second plate of waffles, his pre-mortem memories were intact. Whatever had scrambled his brain had only effected the events after his resurrection, or at least, there hadn’t been the same effect. While missing at first, his past was now right back where it belonged. It was still stark, fresh like recent memories should be, but even that was starting to fade. His long term recollection may have hit a bit of a snag, but it was normalizing. He could trust it.

He had died May 2nd, 2008. That was definite, indisputable. There was no way Bobby had told him he’d been buried four months. There was no way because he’d been gone for over two years. He stabbed a chunk of waffle and shoved it into his mouth, which was drawn up in a giddy, accomplished smile.

As he chewed his face fell. Of course, that meant that all those memories, pseudo-memories of seeing Bobby recently had been just imaginings, delusions, whatever. The empty field where Singer Salvage should have been was just that, empty.

How? And where the hell was Bobby? Maybe, he thought, if he’d been imagining Bobby recently, then maybe **all** his memories of Bobby…

No! he told himself firmly. Do not go there. Anything pre-Hell is solid. You know that. Bobby is real. Sam is real. You most certainly are real, and you are going to find them. He shoved the plate away, suddenly not hungry any longer.

“Scuse me, sweetheart,’ he called to the waitress, “Can I get the check?”

Enough was enough. He was going to get, well, more accurately, make himself a driver’s license, go back to the library, and put this whole existence issue to bed once and for all, period, done.

**XXXXX**

Dean looked approvingly at the South Dakota and Nebraska licenses, judging his handiwork of high quality, before stashing them in his shirt pocket. He wondered passingly if the sense of pride and accomplishment was anything akin to what normal teens felt when passing their driver’s test. He knew one thing for an absolute certainty. Normal people stuff sucked, and they were welcome to it.


	22. Video Killed The Radio Star

Back at the library, settling down in front of the computer, Dean felt an anticipatory rush. Five minutes from now, his existential crises would be settled, and he could get on with figuring out what was going on without the constant distraction of having to reassure himself of his own existence.

He pulled the keyboard forward and pecked out D-E-A-N W-I-N-C-H-E-S-T-E-R, hitting ‘ENTER’ with an accomplished flourish. Seconds later the screen filled with the search results. The sidebar baring his picture took him by surprise. He was pretty sure those only came up for celebrities. Curiously, he read the text.

**Jensen Ackles**

**Born: March 1st, 1978**

**Dallas, Texas**

**Roles:**

**Eric Brady: Days Of Our Lives**

**Eddie G: Blonde**

**Ben/Alec: Dark Angel**

“What the hell?” he burst out, drawing shushes and complaints from the other patrons. “What the hell?’ he repeated in a whisper, leaning in closer to the monitor.

He turned his attention to the list of links and clicked on the top one, opening a Wikipedia article.

**Dean Winchester is one of two main characters in the horror genre book series “Supernatural” created and written by Carver Edlund. Dean, along with his brother Sam, hunts down and battles various mythic terrors within the larger story arc of trying to solve the mystery of their family’s paranormal history.**

Dean blinked, trying to process what he was seeing. So much for ending his existential crises. He skipped further down the page.

**In 2005, Eric Kripke pitched the idea of a television adaptation of the books. It wasn’t picked up, however, and only the untitled pilot episode was ever filmed.**

Dean was too stunned for even speculative wonderings to form in his head. With no other apparent course of action, he went back to the search results. Almost on auto-pilot, he clicked another link: “Jensen Ackles talks to us about Supernatural”.

The video started with a tedious network stock intro. Impatiently he skipped past it, and was confronted by the image of himself inexplicably seated on the stage of some drivel morning show.

“...was really excited about it. I had never heard of the books before Eric asked me if I’d be interested, but the script seemed pretty solid. Dean has a lot in common with Alec, which is probably what made Eric consider me for the part. I felt like I was in a good place to transition into the role. I personally thought the pilot turned out great but didn’t happen. I’m just an actor. They give me the lines, I say them. I don’t get to make the decisions.”

OK, Dean may have been having trouble telling up from down lately, but he was damned straight sure he hadn’t given any crappy morning show interviews about playing himself in a TV show, so what the hell was this? There didn’t seem to be anything else to do but keep watching.

“So, what was it like working with Jared Padalecki?” interview guy asked.

On the screen, not-Dean broke into a jovial laugh, “Oh man, that guy, I gotta be honest, at first I was thinking, ‘Are you kidding me? The Gilmore Girls guy?”

“Not really the same kind of character, different genre.” interview guy prompted.

“Right, exactly,” not-Dean agreed. “Their options were kind of limited, though, because they already had me. Since Sam’s taller than Dean, that’s a whole ongoing thing between them, they could either go with Jared, or Richard Moll in a wig.”

The two shared a laugh with the audience.

“But no, really,” not-Dean continued, “he’s a great guy. We hit it off right off the bat. I’ll tell you this, he’s got the impulse control of a two year old. I mean, I play around. I like to have a good time on set. Then they put me with this guy, and he’s like a big overgrown toddler, and suddenly I’ve got to be the adult in the room.”

“Are you two still friends?” interview guy asked.

“We keep in touch, get together every once in awhile.” not-Dean answered, nodding. “We did a photo shoot together a few months back because they’re kicking around the idea of using us for the book covers.”

“OK, the books,” interview guy seized on the topic, “there’s a rumor that with Edlund publishing again that there may be a second chance for a Supernatural show. Is that true?”

“I don’t know.” not-Dean shrugged, “but anything’s possible in Hollywood. I hope so, I really do. After the pilot, actually being able to be Dean, I got to be a pretty big fan.”

“Oh, not on your best day you creepy ass, shape shifting wannabe.” Dean muttered.

“What do they call it?” interview guys joked, “a fan girl?”

“Fanboy,” not-Dean corrected him, “no, let’s go with fan man.” He puffed out his chest, hands on his hips, “I am...Fanman.” he mugged for the camera.

Dean winced at the display.

“So, would you be interested in playing Dean if that happened?” interview guy tried to steer things back on track.

“Oh man, I’d love that, I really would, but you know, if they start at the beginning, Dean’s 26 when the story starts. I think I’ve gotten a little rough around the edged to pull off 26. I could maybe do John. I’d take that in a heartbeat.”

“I don’t know,” interview guy disagreed, “These make-up people are pretty impressive with what they can do. Let me tell you, our girl here, she is so talented, she makes me look good day after day.”

“Yeah maybe, maybe,” not-Dean went along with the gag. “I’ll have to see if Eric calls me.” He looked into the camera, pantomiming a phone with his hand, “Eric, call me. Let’s talk,”

“OK, they’re telling me we have to take a break.” interview guy broke in. “Jensen, I want to thank you for coming to talk with us. I understand you’re going to sing for us before you go.”

“Yes,” not-Dean confirmed, “I’ve got my buddy Jason Manns here with me. We’re going to do a duet. It’s a track off his new album “Never Alone”.

“Can’t wait, and we’ll be back with that right after this.”

Dean stared at the screen in stunned silence. This was...he didn’t know what this was. Weird was nowhere near a big enough word. A shifter, it had to be a shifter. No, he realized, couldn’t be, no eye flare.

OK then, it was one of his messed up hallucinations. Like when he saw John. Hell, he’d probably wake up tomorrow remembering this all completely differently. He pressed his hand down on the wound on his arm, just to feel the pain, to know it was there.

He had cut himself, in Bobby’s kitchen, with Bobby’s own knife, taken off of him in a scuffle. The wound proved it. The rest of the world may be refusing to get on board with the facts, but it had to have happened. Open wounds didn’t just spontaneously appear.

The burn did, an annoying voice in his head reminded him. Not in the mood, he told it to shut up.


	23. Reality Check

Dean knew it was too early to be drinking. He knew he shouldn't be drinking the hard stuff at all. Technically he was on a case. He threw back his fourth shot.

It couldn't be real. It just couldn't. This had to be a trickster, or a djinn dream world, or he had been right back at not-Bobby's and this was Hell. He didn't know what he knew anymore, but he knew, right now, he didn't want to know it sober.

He had never had what you would call a healthy, defined sense of self. He'd lost that years ago to the role of good little soldier. Being Sam's brother, John's son had been the anchors of his existence, the central point around which the essence of his identity had revolved. Looking after Sam had given him purpose. John's instructions had given him direction. What else had he needed?

But they weren't here now. They were missing, just like his car and everything in it, Bobby and the salvage yard. Everything that had defined him had been stripped away, leaving nothing but Dean, all alone with no connection of any kind to the world around him.

He raised the empty shot glass. "Sweetheart," he said, catching the bartender's eye. He shouldn't be drinking. He had a case to work. He didn't care.

"Girl trouble?" the bartender asked, refilling his glass.

"If only." he snorted sulkily.

"Look, it's none of my business," she said sympathetically, "but maybe you should slow down a little. I know a lot of people come in here to forget, and I get it, I do, but trust me, drinking faster won't get you drunk any faster. It just hits you harder when it kicks in. How about you give what's in your system a chance to work before you give yourself alcohol poisoning?"

He looked at her for a moment and then slid the shot to the side. "I'll give it a few minutes." he conceded.

"Want to talk about it?" she offered, "That's been known to help, too."

"You wouldn't understand." he declined.

"You'd be surprised," she prodded, "after five years filling glasses in this place, I've heard it all. Tell you what, I'll bet you a fin you can't shock me. What is it? Your woman and your best friend? Big gay freak out? Abducted by aliens?"

"Aliens? No, you know, there has never been one piece of solid scientific evidence of an actual alien encounter. I doubt I'd be the first." he eyed the shot but didn't pick it up.

"I don't know," she smiled, "you're awfully easy on the eyes. I can see if the little green men were shopping, you might seem like the pick of the litter."

"Wouldn't be the weirdest thing to ever have happened to me." Dean confessed. "Hell, it wouldn't even be the weirdest thing to have happened to me today."

"So, talk to me." she goaded him, "I can use the five bucks."

Dean was a sucker for flirting stone cold sober. With a pleasant, floaty buzz starting to kick in he found that he was willing to drop his guard a bit to keep the exchange going. "OK, did you ever remember something that didn't happen?"

"You mean like a dream?" she asked unphased.

"Yeah, kind of." Dean babbled, the combination of stress and whiskey loosening his tongue more than he normally would have allowed. "Say there's this place and you've been there a bunch of times. You know the creaky floorboard, and the smell of the must, and the spot that always leaks when it rains too hard because Bobby's always going to fix it once the storm season's over, but he never does. I mean, you know the place." he slapped his hand down on the bar for emphasis. "Then say you go out there one day, and it just isn't there." He grabbed the shot and downed it, too caught up in his animated narrative to remember his promise. "You heard that one before?" he challenged as he slammed the empty shot glass back down on the bar.

"So like Mandela Effect," she observed, taking it all in stride.

"Man-who?" Dean slurred slightly, his focus beginning to fall prey to the amount of liquor he'd jammed into himself in such short order.

"Hold on," she said and scurried off. When she returned she was fingering the screen of a cell. "Watch this," she instructed, handing it over to Dean.

He spent the next twenty minutes engrossed in a breakdown of the inconsistencies of the details of the Kennedy assassination. Drinking was forgotten as he got caught up in the video, which described just the phenomenon he'd been experiencing, a shifting reality, inconsistent with memories.

"Looks like I owe you five bucks." he conceded when he summoned the bartender back over to return her phone. "Can I borrow your pen?"

"Did that help?" she inquired, handing it over.

"I don't know, maybe." he answered as he jotted 'Mandela Effect' down on a cocktail napkin. "Could I get a coffee, black? I need to clear my head a little." He allowed himself a small smile. This was the first thing that had gone right all day.

While he waited for his coffee he let his eyes wander over the room, coming to rest of the scuffed up pool table stuffed in the back, looking like it had been an afterthought. His funds were starting to run a bit low again. If he could sober up some, he might be able to do something about that once the place started to fill up a little bit.

He was starting to miss the lucrative simplicity of a fake credit card, but that required set up. Fake names, fake documents, fake addresses with arrangements to forward mail to real PO boxes, none of which he had in place. Until he could set up a network, he'd just have to keep getting by as best he could on pool, a card game if he could find one.

He sipped his coffee. It was cheap generic stuff, the sort you expect to find in a dive bar where it was likely hardly ever ordered. It would do the job, but it was truly terrible. He debated breaking with his usual routine and asking for some sugar.

_Gi was shoveling heaping spoonfuls of sugar into his own mug. He took a sip, grimaced and added another overflowing spoonful before deeming the coffee drinkable._

The image crept slowly past Dean's buzz and took shape in his whiskey addled mind. "Son of a bitch," he whispered hoarsely. How in hell had he missed that?


	24. Trick Or Treat

Dean glanced around, ensuring that the hallway was still empty before he set to work on the lock. It was an embarrassingly simple one that he could have picked at twelve, with his eyes closed. That was fitting. Dean hadn't seen anything beyond the door that had been much worth protecting. Crouched over the lock he deftly worked the bobby pins against the tumblers until a soft click signaled his success.

He pocketed the makeshift lock pick and eased the door open. All current craziness considered he wouldn't have been surprised to discover Bobby's living room or even Taj Mahal inside. For once, however, it seemed that his memories had held up. Gi's shoebox of an apartment was just as he remembered it.

It was encouraging, a sign that he might still have the element of surprise in his favor. He retrieved the stake, shoddily fashioned from a branch poached from a local park, from where he'd left it near his knee, and stood. Ghost like he crossed the threshold and moved across the floor in the shallow light.

Gi was sprawled on the sofa, either asleep or passed out. Dean made his way over until he stood looking down at the sleeping form, regarding it with contempt. This sorry son of a bitch had made the biggest mistake of its long, troublesome life, and now it was going to pay.

With a swift, well practiced motion Dean clamped a hand over Gi's mouth, while the other pressed the stake to the boy's skinny chest. Gi startled awake. Panicked eyes looked questioningly up at Dean as one hand groped clumsily at Dean's arm.

"Uh-uh, you don't want to do that." Dean warned him, prodding his captive's chest with the point of the stake. "Feel that?" he asked menacingly, "That's oak, locally grown, might be organic. I'm not sure, really don't care." Gi let his hand fall away, fearful, questioning eyes focused on Dean.

"Now, you'd be dead already," Dean explained, "if I didn't need some answers. Here's what's going to happen. I'm going to ask, and you're going to answer. You give me any trouble," he applied a bit of pressure to the stake, "and maybe I decide I don't need those answers all that much. You understand the rules?"

Gi nodded, eyes wide. A muffled response escaped from under Dean's hand.

"Good," Dean said coolly, "that's going to make this go a whole lot smoother for both of us. Now, where is Sam?" He moved his hand from Gi's mouth, lowering it to take a hold of his throat.

Gi sputtered, "Dean! What the hell?"

"Yeah, that's another thing," Dean dug his thumb into the side of Gi's neck, letting him feel the pressure against his windpipe. "You almost called me that yesterday. So what's up with you knowing my name when I never dropped it?"

"It came to me!" Gi blurted, panic in his voice, "It just came to me, psychic, remember? I didn't say anything cause I didn't want to freak you out! Sometimes people aren't really expecting the real thing! That's it, I swear!"

Dean regarded his prisoner, studying his expression and manner. The kid was making a good show of being legitimately scared to death. Tricksters were masters of deception and mimicry. "Where's Sam?" he asked again in a no nonsense tone.

"Who is Sam?" Gi wailed, confusion and fear twisting his features.

"Wrong answer," Dean snarled, pressing down, threatening to pierce the skin on the boy's scrawny chest.

"Dude, look at me!" Gi pleaded, "Don't you think if I had any idea what you're talking about, I'd spill?" Seriously, I don't know any Sam. I don't...oh god, please don't kill me."

Dean felt his resolve waver. This could be a trick, probably was, but he couldn't be sure He couldn't trust his instincts right now, and he sure couldn't end up staking some innocent kid because he hadn't been one hundred percent.

"Damn it," he muttered, pulling the stake away. Gi let out a stuttering sigh of relief. "Sit up," Dean ordered frustrated with the situation. "Here, drink this. It'll help." he scavenged a likely flat, half full beer bottle from the spool table and offered it.

Gi took the bottle with a trembling hand, wiping the back of the other across his eyes. "Seriously, Dude," he squeaked out, "what the actual hell?"

A sick feeling stabbed at Dean's gut, "You really don't know anything, do you? About what's going on with me?" It was more of an observation that a question.

Gi finished draining the bottle, "What could I know? I barely got a read on you yesterday, and you made a big boss battle out of that."

Dean had the good grace to look embarrassed, "I thought...you know what, forget it. I made a mistake."

"You think?" Gi snapped.

"OK," Dean got to his feet, "good talk, you probably want to be calling the cops now, so I'll just head out."

"Dude, sit down," Gi said, sounding resigned, "I'm not calling the cops."

"No, really, I…" Dean started to protest.

"Dude, sit down!" Gi repeated. The firm tone sounded odd coming out of him. "Something, something big, is obviously up with you." he continued. "I figure I can help you with it or wait until your next mistake and my next midnight wake up call from The Rake, so sit."

Dean considered his options. They were pretty meager. He'd been chasing his own tail for a week now, and all he'd accomplished was getting himself so tangled up that he'd broken in on and almost staked what could be just an innocent kid. He needed help, and as flaky as this maybe/maybe not psychic skater dude was, he was offering to help. "What the hell," he surrendered and took a seat on the worn sofa.


End file.
